Gingerbread House

This is a project I have been wanting to do for so long, I love gingerbread, and gingerbread houses look amazing. The fact that I did this is exactly the reason I started this blog, I don't take blogging very seriously, but love that I have a reason and outlet to make something as elaborate as this gingerbread house. It is relatively simple to make, but just takes ages as there is a lot of waiting around!

The gingerbread was probably the simplest part, you melt butter with muscavado sugar and golden syrup (which smelt amazing), and then fold it into eggs and the dry ingredients, and knead to a soft dough. I added cinnamon (cause its my fave), all spice, ginger and loads of orange zest so it tastes and smells SO christmassy, its times like this I wish smell-o-vision existed.

I downloaded some templates from the internet, I could have drawn some up myself, but why make things more difficult? I did however make some changes, I decided that the front windows should be 4-pane stained glass, and changed the top one to a heart window. I rolled out the dough into about a £1 thickness, then marked out the templates and cut them out. I placed some clear boiled sweets in the window gaps to make stained glass windows, I remember making stained glass window biscuits in school, and they were always horrible to eat, but certainly look pretty.

Then the easy bit, baking the panels! Again this took some time as I wanted to bake them all on the same shelf to ensure they cooked evenly so had to do a few batches. I also was mega paranoid about cooking them enough, I didn't want the panels to be too soft as then the house might collapse. Once baked they had to be left at least overnight to dry out, again so that they were crisp enough to stay upright.

And then came the fun part! I wanted to tile the roof with chocolate buttons, I totally under-estimated how many buttons I would need, so I iced and tiled one roof panel one night and did the other one the next night. I then had to wait for these to dry completely. I used royal icing to ice everything, its so much stronger than normal icing and sets really hard so is ideal for use as plaster, which is essentially what I was using it for.

(note the obligatory glass of red wine on wine sundays)

So whilst the roof was drying, I constructed the body of the house, I did this quite haphazzardly, and with loads and loads of icing, I was paranoid that the walls would fall down so just kept reinforcing it.

And then I played the waiting game, again! This was definitely quite a big project to undertake, it took me just over a week, although in actual hours it wasn't that much. But then it was finally done! I had been collecting sweets for quite some time as I knew I was going to do this, and so had an exciting box of treats...

I had made a little gingerbread xmas tree, and covered it in royal icing dyed with wilton gel food colours (best investment), the great thing about royal icing is how thick it is so I could get a nice furry effect to the tree. I didn't have any specific plans for the decoration, I had done a couple of sketches as to how I wanted it to look, and had plans to make a little frozen pond by melting down some clear sweets, but then the board I used was too small anyway, so I settled for a dolly mixture path and a sporadic placement of sweets.

And then it was the moment of truth, putting the roof and chimney on! I was pleasantly surprised as to how sturdy the whole thing was, turns out I didn't need to be so worried. I enlisted my flatmate Rosie to turn her hand at making some icicles, and for someone who had never piped anything before, she did an excellent job!

And the final part was to give it a generous dusting of snow (icing sugar) and place it infront of the tree. A festive delight! It also still smells unbelievable, I'm not sure I can bear to let anyone eat it, perhaps after christmas, which is another bonus, gingerbread keeps incredibly well so will be edible for quite some weeks.
Most definitely in the Christmas spirit now!

Soph x

P.s, This post is dedicated to my amazing friend Felicity Dale, who is one of my biggest supporters, and has just bought her first real house, love you lots. x