welcome to how to cook that I'm Ann Reardon and it's that time of year again
when it's getting close to Christmas this year I decided to make a
gravity-defying gingerbread house inspired by the UP movie house
I made a simpler version of this many years ago and I didn't film how to make
it I just made it and took a few photos so this time I'm going to try and make
it even better the first thing you'll need to do is print out the template
that I made all those years ago now if any gingerbread house has this many
pieces you should know that it's a complicated one and probably not for
beginners I have this gingerbread house template and several other easier ones
on the howtocookthat.net website for you and all the recipe quantities and
details that I've used in this house are there too I am going to make a couple of
adjustments last time I made all the balcony rails out of gingerbread and
this time I'm going to do them out of fondant so they can be a bit finer and a
bit more detailed so I'm just going to get rid of those bits from the template
now to make the gingerbread dough we are going to need three batches of this for
each batch we have flour sugar and then for our syrups we have molasses and
glucose syrup you can swap this for corn syrup and you can swap this for golden
syrup or honey but it will affect the flavor the color and the texture of your
dough we have milk butter and then we have our spices and baking powder with
the spices I've got cloves cinnamon and ginger you can vary the amounts of these
completely or leave them out whatever flavor you want muck around with the
spices all you like first thing we need to do is melt our butter and you can do
that in the microwave or on the stove top and then add in the sugar and the
glucose syrup and the molasses and give that a stir then you can add in your
milk and again give it a stir around and then it's time to add the flour and all
your spices whatever you've chosen to put in there and the baking powder and
stir that all together until you have a thick soft dough tip
that gingerbread dough some plastic wrap and wrap it up firmly
and you want to place that in the fridge and as the butter cools down your dough
is going to get thicker and we need to make of course the two more batches of
this you couldn't make it all at once unless you have a ginormous mixing bowl
next I want you to lay out all your template pieces onto pieces of baking
paper so you know which pieces will fit on which trays and how many trays you're
going to need so you know how much you need to split your dough up between the
trays put the dough onto some baking paper sprinkle it with some flour on top
so the rolling pin doesn't stick and roll it out to the size of your tray
place your pieces on top and cut around the template now you can see here I've
cut around the template but then I've also left a gap or a border of dough and
the reason I've done that is to fold the one because it helps stop it spreading
out and true it stops the corners from burning in the oven now the other
important thing is to make sure you take the template off before you bake it I've
forgotten to do that before and then the template sticks and also halfway through
baking pull it out and redo these cuts just to make sure that they stay all the
way through rather than fusing together so slide that onto a baking tray and
bake it in the oven once it is baked and cooled check your pieces of firm enough
I've got some of the scraps here to show you this one is really soft and this one
is really hard and it's the exact same dough the only difference is how long it
was baked for so if it's soft after its cooled just chuck it back in the oven
for a little bit longer just to dry it out give it an extra five or ten minutes
and then cool it again and you should be good to go once all the pieces are baked
and cooled lay out the backside and front walls and I always used to use
royal icing for putting gingerbread houses together but now I quite like
using compound chocolate because it sets firm faster you'll notice here that I
have the back wall on the inside and the side walls on the outside that makes a
difference as to how everything fits together and I've cut myself a baseboard
in the shape of the house and put a hole in it you'll need to do that too if
you're wanting it to float if you don't want it to float you can just you
is a blank board in a normal shape rectangle board to put your house on at
the front wall and then the three bits of the bay window now before you add
chocolate to these check that they all sit neatly together because the
gingerbread can spread out a bit and it's quite thick you may need to just
sort of adjust them slightly the best way to do that is using a fine grater
and just grate some of the ginger bread off so that they fit together on that
angle there then add that little bit just next to the front door now this
area here is raised for the front porch so add that rectangle into place there
and then the front piece across at the bottom and then also at the top of the
porch there's another piece that goes across there now before we put the roof
on you need to decide what you want to do with your windows do you want to
leave them plain or do you want to put some gelatin sheets on the inside so
that you can't just see straight in so that it gives that sort of window a look
I'm gonna go with the gelatin sheets and I'm just attaching them with white
chocolate add the ledge to the top of the bay window and over the porch as
well and then put the section above the bay window into place then add the
sticky out bits on the side section of the house and then you can start adding
all your roof pieces now you can see why this template had so many parts it's
quite a complicated house design because when they were designing it for the
movie they weren't thinking about people making it as a gingerbread house clearly
before you put this last bit of roof on you will need to make two decisions one
do you want lollies or lights inside your house and two do you want the
balloon coming out of the chimney because if you do you need to put the
support rod into place now otherwise you're not going to be able to secure it
in there first things first if you want it to float you're going to need a big
solid MDF board with a nut underneath holding
the rod in and a washer and a nut on top and make sure you've tightened that
really well decide what height you want it has to be floating add another nut
there and then had a washer and then add the house down
over the top and support that with your hand while you try and screw another nut
all the way down and support rod down to the top of the board inside the house
and then tighten that up from the underneath again this needs to be really
tight to hold it in place you probably should use a wooden board for under the
house rather than cardboard but I didn't because I didn't want to saw the wooden
board hopefully it is strong enough to hold and then you can add the last two
big pieces of roof into place and I've just cut an extra piece out on this so
that it will fit around the rod there at the little extra window and the two
little roof pieces on that side there on the front and now for the balloon I have
another piece of rod and a coupler so that I can join it to the rod coming out
of the house for the balloon put some marshmallows into a bowl and microwave
them until they are melted look at that gooey melted marshmallows then add in
rice bubbles and stir them together and yes they are called rust bubbles here in
Australia that's what it says on the packet and that's what we call them I
like to use cheaper chuyia marshmallows for this because they set a bit firmer
than the soft ones line a bowl with baking paper and scoop in the
marshmallow rust bubble mixture and push it down firmly if it's sticking to your
hands just dampen your hands slightly add the central support rod and to give
that a bit more support and pouring in some melted compound white chocolate
that's just going to grip onto the metal rod and also spread out of it it stays
firm and together I'm using some sticky tape just to support that rod while I
add more of the marshmallow mixture if you've got someone who can just hold it
for you that will do to make another batch and build it up on top of the bowl
until you get a nice balloon shape once you're happy with the shape you can
cover the whole thing in deep blue fondant then using a little bit of water
add a sugared almond or whatever candy you think looks like individual balloons
onto your big balloon using just water worked fine to attach
them when the balloon was sloping but when it got too vertical there started
sliding off so I'm going to have to let that side dry before turning it over and
doing the other side it's now 3 a.m. in the morning so I'm going to hit the bed
and continue this tomorrow moving on to making the decorations for
the colored cladding I'm just cutting strips of fondant and I'm going to leave
them to dry out so they're easy to get onto the house looking perfectly
straight which is quite hard to do with strips of soft fondant I'm making them a
bit longer than I think they need to be so that I can just cut them to shape as
we decorate the house this is easy but it's actually quite repetitive because
all the sides have different coloured cladding so you need to make lots and
lots and lots of strips of fondant for the windows lay out thin strips yes more
strips of fondant followed by some more strips going across
now I've just measured the windows using a ruler on the house to see how big they
actually are now that it's baked everything can spread and move a little
bit in gingerbread that's why I'm measuring it off the baked house and not
off the template leave them to dry out a bit and then trim off the excess bits
around the edges and then add a border of light wood color over the top of each
window now around the base of the house all the way around there's a rectangle
panels of wood with a border of a different coloured wood over the top now
I've just used my knife to make indents in the rectangle part so it looks like
it's got diagonal planks but it's just actually one piece of fondant and then
I'm adding those extra strips around the edge for the columns on the front of the
house I'm making them out of fondant rolled quite thickly and then I'm just
cutting a slice to make a square column once you have three of those cut line
them up together and then just use a ruler or the back of a knife to indent
them all at the same level then add the handrail and the spindles and to join
this together just use a little bit of water and it will join the fondant to
itself the hose reel is of course an important part of this
gingerbread house because it's used to pull the house along in the movie so
make a circle of black and then put a dot of black in the middle and overlay
that with two strips of black and then trim them to size and leave them to dry
out while you've got your black fondant out roll out a tiny tiny thin snake of
black and make it into a number one and a number eight to go on the front pillar
it's tiny details like this which make the house look really good can you guess
what this next detail is that I'm making it's certainly not perfect but it's
going to have to do for the weathervane it's supposed to be a weird-looking
rooster thing that they have poked some spaghetti into it for the support and
will be able to poke that into the top of the house now for the strings to hold
the balloons if you want to you can roll these by hand have fun doing it if not
get a cheap fondant extruder and make lots of them at once and then straighten
them out and leave them to dry also use the extruder to make a hose and wrap
that around the reel until you're happy that you've got enough of the hose on
there make a rectangle out of fondant and add that into place around the
support rod for your chimney once it is in the right spot then you can just
shape that and make sure it's square then add a strip around the top to make
it look a bit more chimney like add some wood coloured fondant onto the front
porch trim it to shape and then use a ruler or the back of a knife to just
indent planks where wooden planks would be moving on to the roof add a strip of
fondant along the bottom of your roof and indented at various intervals there
and then continue to add more layers up the roof in slightly different colored
neutral shades of fondant all the way up to the top add a piece along the bottom
and again I'm using compound chocolate for this because it sets faster and
holds it really firm you could use royal icing here if you wanted to though then
add the cladding into place trimming each one as you go to exactly the right
length and slightly overlapping why over the top of the next one now I'm
doing the back of the house first so I can iron out any problems and figure out
anything I'm not happy with before I get to the front they look pretty good but
if you look at the side here there's a gap at the corners where they join so on
the front I'm going to need to cut the side bits on an angle so that it meets
which is going to take a little bit longer but it'll make it look really
good adding all this cladding took so long to do over the whole house it does
look good but be warned if you want to do it it takes a long time add the door
into place and then put a strip of blue along the roof edges there and add all
the windows into place the underneath of the roof also needs to be blue so just
use your leftover strips of blue to do under there
the front of the house has some fish-scale cladding and I'm doing this
with soft freshly rolled fondant because it needs to be curved I don't really
have a cutter small enough so I'm just using bigger fish scale sizing using the
Rose cutter that I had and then adding that across and I used chocolate
underneath it to make it curved like it is on the up house then add that window
into place there and onto the bit that I've been avoiding because it's a fiddly
bit all the front details now to the left hand side of the house
add in some electrical boxes and some cords they all flash and make noises
when the house first takes off add a fuse box to the back of the house and
then get some more sleep because that's been a really fun day the
next day get someone strong and handsome to help you lift up the balloon so you
can attach it using the coupler thanks Dave ... and then you can add the rest of
the sugared almonds now I'm using blue royal icing now instead of just using
water so that they'll stay on when it's on the upright slope and that seems to
be much easier then cover the rest of the balloon with the sugar almonds using
any smaller ones at the top so it looks like the tops of balloons to cover the
support rod you need to make more of whites using the fondant extruder and
add them on over the rod just trimming them off at the bottom once you have
lots of them there I had some of the dry ones that you made earlier just poking
them into the fondant at the bottom and using a little bit of royal icing at the
top to hold it onto the balloon now these are really fragile so if you
intend on moving your gingerbread house to another person's house to eat it I do
all of these strings once you get there that way you can transport it with the
balloon off - which would be a bit easier add in the weathervane that looks
ok now it's on the top of the house and then to cover the board chop some Oreos
in a food processor or if you don't have a food processor just put them in a bag
and bash them with a rolling pin that works just as well cover the foil on the
board with melted chocolate and then sprinkle under the house where it's just
lifted off with Oreo dirt all the way under there then cover the rest of the
board with coconut that's been colored with some green food coloring you just
put it in a bowl add some green food coloring and mix it through if you're
using gel color you will need to water it down before you add it in put the
hose reel into place it's not quite sitting on there because the cladding is
sitting out a bit so I'm just going to build it up with a couple more bits of
cladding so that it's at the same level and then add that back on the front
there and at long last after days of working on it the gingerbread house is
finally finished wow that was a huge effort I think that it looks pretty cool
though in the end I'd rather it was floating a little bit higher but there's
no way I'm gonna risk trying to undo that and move it up I don't even think
that would be possible at this stage but if you're making it you can do it if you
make this make sure you take a photo of it and upload it in the comment section
on the website so the rest of the world can see it - with thanks to my patrons
for supporting this channel you guys are amazing I wouldn't be able to spend time
doing this sort of thing for you without your support. Merry Christmas to all of
you! subscribe to how to cook that for more cool
stuff and watch more of my videos to help me out make it a great week and
I'll see you on Friday