Gingerbread house

I haven’t been slacking these past few days. Hard to believe, probably, since there’s no sign of it on the site, but it’s true. I hope I’ll soon be able to show you what I’ve been staying up half the night working on. Of course I’ve cooked a few things too, and of course I’ll share the recipes.

I made brownies (you can see a photo on the fan page on Facebook), sweet herring (no idea if it turned out well, I haven’t tasted it yet) and a poppy seed roll. But today I want to tell you about the gingerbread house I promised Ninka.

If only I’d known what I was letting myself in for when I promised her that gingerbread. I did try to persuade my little girl that maybe we could make brownies together instead. No such luck. I had to make the dark little cake myself. It wasn’t making the gingerbread, of course. It was putting the pieces together into a house. A disaster. A massacre. A horror show. I was utterly helpless.

In the end I even considered using actual glue. Those pieces absolutely, positively refused to stick together. I was using plain icing as glue (just warm water and icing sugar). Huge mistake.

The house wasn’t all that pretty before I stuck it together. Now it looks like it’s dripping with icicles. But it’s standing. Ninka and I really did try our hardest.

And you know what? You can look at the photo, smile and ask, “What’s that supposed to be?” But the first thing Ninka said to her mum was, “Mummy, Daddy and I made such a beautiful gingerbread house today.” To me it’s the most beautiful one there is. Our first Christmas gingerbread house. It’s worth having a go.

Recipe at a glance:

Prep time: hours and hours (for the whole house. The gingerbread itself takes about 15 minutes plus baking time)

Gingerbread baking time: about 12 minutes

Oven temperature for the gingerbread: 180 degrees Celsius

How many people? A whole crowd can help make it, and afterwards it’s a treat (or an eyesore) for everyone who sees it

How many calories? I wouldn’t eat it myself, but Ninka tried a few pieces (of the gingerbread, obviously) and said they were actually quite good. It must have plenty (though I wouldn’t recommend eating it)

Ingredients for the gingerbread (and for building the house):

• half a kilo of wheat flour
• a block of baking margarine (I used some cheap stuff from a discount shop. It smelled awful as it melted)
• a glass of white sugar
• 150 grams of honey
• a tablespoon of baking soda
• a packet of gingerbread spice mix
• plenty of icing sugar (I went through about 350 grams)
• warm water
• food colouring
• butterflies for decorating

The recipe (easier said than done):

I baked the gingerbread pieces (walls, roofs, bases) the day before. I wanted to give them plenty of time to cool and firm up. We were building houses, after all (the plan was to make several, but we stopped at one, so now I’ve got walls, roofs, even chimneys left over. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to attach those).

Right, you need building materials before the fun can begin. I melted the margarine (it smelled awful. Now I remember why I don’t use margarine). Into a deep bowl went all the dough ingredients, in this order: flour, sugar, baking soda, gingerbread spice, white sugar (not icing sugar, that’s just for the icing, aka cement), honey. Then I added the melted margarine. I mixed everything thoroughly with a big spoon and started kneading. The dough’s a bit like tart pastry.

I dusted the worktop with flour as I rolled the dough out into sheets 3–4 millimetres thick. I cut out the walls and transferred them to a tray lined with baking paper. I baked my building materials in an oven preheated to 180 degrees Celsius for about 12 minutes. Altogether I had enough material for about 3–4 small houses. We used enough for one 🙁

How did we go about building the house? The next day, once the pieces were dry and cold, I trimmed the edges with a knife to straighten them up. They round off in the oven as the dough rises. Then we decorated the walls with white icing and shop-bought sugar butterflies. The icing was just warm water and icing sugar: put some icing sugar in a small bowl, pour in a tablespoon of warm water and add a little more water if it’s too thick, or icing sugar if it’s too runny. There you have it, decoration and mortar in one.

Once the decorations had dried, we tried to assemble the house and stick it together. Nothing doing, until we’d poured a truly enormous amount of icing onto every single wall. As you can see in the photo. I’m sure a lot of it comes down to practice, but if you know a better way of sticking the pieces together, please tell me in the comments. Today I’ll wish you good luck instead of bon appétit!