Welcome to How To Cook That I am Ann Reardon, do you guys have a Christmas tradition that
you do every year?
In our house we make a gingerbread house every Christmas and this time I wanted a whimsical
candyland type look but not using any fondant that was the challenge on this one...
I'll link you to a playlist at the end with houses from previous years so you can see
how to make those too.
To make this one you'll need flour, sugar, butter, milk, molasses, glucose syrup or light
corn syrup spices - I've got ginger, cloves and cinnamon and some baking powder.
Put the butter....sugar... and the molasses and glucose syrup into a bowl.
I'll put all the recipes quantities on the howtocookthat.net website for you and there
is a link to that below.
Mix them together until they are well combined and then pour in the milk.
And then all of the dry ingredients.
If you don't have a dough hook just stir through half of the flour using the mixer then add
the rest and stir using a spoon.
Now you'll need a template for your house, there is a few different ones on the website,
I've made a new one this year.
Print it out and cut them out including the windows and any pieces which are like this
one that wouldn't fit on one page I have put a 'join here with two crosses' so cut them
both out, match up the join here and tape them together.
Place your dough in between two sheets of baking paper and use a rolling pin to spread
it out into a large rectangle.
remove the top baking paper and add your template pieces.
Use a pizza cutter to make the straight cuts, now dont take off these pieces because otherwise
the corners tend to burn but having those pieces there just protects them and it also
stops the gingerbread from spreading out too much.
You also want to cut all your windows but again leave them in place for now.
Peel off the template, if it sticks a bit that's ok just pat it down using your finger
and bake those in the oven.
Half way through baking redo your cuts and scoop out the dough from the windows and that
will help it bake through all the way through to the middle of your dought.
And then you want to put it back in the oven to dry out.
Once they are cooked and cooled spread some dark chocolate onto some foil nice and thick,
and then add your gingerbread pieces and push them down, this will give a thin coat to the
outside of the house.
As it is starting to set run a knife around the pieces and remove the excess chocolate,
you can remelt those pieces to do the other walls.
Then when you turn the pieces over they look smooth and neat and everyone likes eating
gingerbread with chocolate on it.
Cut a baseboard to the size of your house and lay out the pieces flat around it.
pipe some chocolate around the base and up the sides of the front and back pieces.
Then you just need to carefully lift up your pieces and join them together, just like you
are making a box.
Wiggle and adjust your pieces until they are all straight and you're happy with them then
let that set.
Add more chocolate to your joins and smooth it over with a spatula.
Now For the small roof you need to cut down the gingerbread on an angle so it will join
with the big roof nice and flush.
Just use a serrated knife and shave off a small bit.
If you want to you can also cut some gingerbread off the top here to round it out.
For windows I am using gelatin sheets, just dipping each end into some chocolate or you
could use royal icing and then pop that into place.
If you want lights you need to add them now before you put the roof on.
I want mine so sit at the top so i am just going to add a couple of rafters using off
cuts from around the edge.
Once that is set hang your lights over the top.
I also have a battery pack going out through the back door.
Add anything else large that you want inside now ... this is just an ice-cream cone covered
in chocolate and then m&m's around.
So when the kids look through the window it looks like there is a Christmas tree inside.
Now pipe some chocolate along the top edges and put the two long pieces carefully into
place, Before glueing these on with chocolate I have put them on to check they fit nice
and snug up against the top of the walls.
And I've shaved off a little bit on the bottom top edge so that they sit together.
Add the two little roof pieces into place, I have covered both sides of this in chocolate
because you can see the underneath at the front of the house.
Then add the front porch roof... ooops ... it's dripping down a bit, I'll clean that up in
a minute.
Use chocolate to fill the joins at the top of the roof and smooth that off using a knife.
Now to make the garden.
I want my house on the top of a hill.
So I am using a big board covered in foil then adding spare bits of gingerbread stacking
them up to make something to put the house on.
If you don't want yours up high you can just make the house on a bigger flat board to start
with.
I can't have a floating house so now I am going to add all the rest of the gingerbread
bits all around it leaning up against it.
Next I mixed up a batch of royal icing and you will find the recipe for that on my website
too.
It's really easy to make.
Colour it how you like and paint the outside of your house using a new clean brush.
Now you're probably wondering why put chocolate underneath and then paint it with royal icing?
But wait a minute and you'll see.
Take a ruler and make lines across the house so that you can see the chocolate underneath.
Then scrape down between the lines to make brick sized rectangles and do that on all
of your walls.
Now paint the roof with royal icing, I'm using a nice blue for this.
Renovating would be easy if you were giant wouldn't it!
I'm adding jubes along the top ridge cap and candy canes to the front just to pretty it
up underneath there.
I'm also just going to add some chocolate melts that have been cut in half.
Now I was going to scrape the roof to make it look like tiles, but I've changed my mind
so the chocolate under here is just a bonus - the little m&m's look much cuter.
Then I decided to pipe little half circles between them to make it look a bit like roof
tiles.
Moving on to the garden, it looks a bit like a wasteland at the moment!
I want some of the gingerbread pieces to be like rocks jutting out so I am putting brownish
grey royal icing onto those ones.
And then I'm using the same colour down the path and just adding some chocolate-coated
sultanas for rocks all the way down.
For the rest of the garden I am going to cover the whole thing in green royal icing.
This is easier if you do one section at a time because I want to top it with coconut
coloured with green food colouring.
To colour coconut you just put some green food colour into a bowl, water it down with
about a tablespoon of water and then mix in your coconut - it's super easy.
Use the back of your spoon to press it down a little and add it around the rocks.
Now I want to make the path shiny so it's a bit more magical.
So I'm just going to use some luster dust, this is sliver but I think I'll swap it over
to gold.
There we go a path paved with gold.
How magical is that?
To make the rocks that are sticking out look realistic dust on some brown powdered food
colouring around them as shading then use a little bit of black gel colouring just in
the cracks.
Then wet your paintbrush and brush over the rock so those colours go into all the cracks
and crevices just like they would on a real rock.
Once that dries it won't be shiny anymore and it will look really good.
At this point I piped around the windows in brown and added a chocolate coated door but
I wasn't happy with either of these and changed them later so let's just skip that bit.
Add an ice cream cone to the garden and cover that with green royal icing.
Then decorate it with a few little icing decorations.
Now add some lollipops, candy canes and sugar sticks around the grass.
And then using a leaf tip add some little plants around the place you can even make
these grow up the wall if you like.
That's looking pretty good but I don't love it!
There is a disconnect between the seriousness of the walls and the fun of the roof and the
garden, so how are we going to fix that?
I think I'm going to paint the walls a deeper colour using some watered down food colouring
and you can tell me in the comments which version you like better, the one that i just
showed you or the end result.
Now I know I said no fondant but the front door just looked too serious so I swapped
that for something more colourful.
And now I want to add some icicles dripping down from the roof and some snow on the actual
roof.
In all the movies it snows at Christmas time, here in Australia it is hot, it's the middle
of summer at Christmas!
I'm going to put a poll on this one ... does it snow where you live at Christmas time or
is it hot or is it cold but doesn't snow?
I've added a few jelly beans onto the bricks too to make it a bit more whimsical, let me
know in the comments which version you prefer.
I'm putting all the leftover lollies in through the back door and then sealing it shut!
Click here for more gingerbread houses from previous years, here to go to my channel,
here for the latest video and here for a random video selected for you by YouTube!
Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday.