You cannot get in the Christmas mood without baking a few festive treats throughout December with your friends and family, and what could be more festive than a ginger bread house? Not only is it a fun activity to get you into the Christmas mood, it will also fill your house with a lovely cinnamon and ginger smell, and you’ll be able to eat it afterwards! If your family or friends love a little competition, you can also compete to see who has the best decorated gingerbread house.
The Perfect Gingerbread House Recipe
One of the most important parts of making the best gingerbread house for Christmas is the cookie dough recipe! That is why we are releasing our top secret recipe for you to make yourself at home as well as sharing our recommended gingerbread house template and a few top tips for decorating. To make your gingerbread house experience as easy as possible, we recommend using a template instead of eye-balling the shapes, otherwise you may be left with a rather wonky gingerbread house!
Ingredients
- 240g flour
- 80g Butter
- 50g Honey
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1.5 tbsp cocoa powder
- 3 tsp cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg
How to make a gingerbread house recipe?
Mix flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and baking powder in a large bowl. Melt the butter and add honey to it. Mix the melted butter with honey into the dry mixture. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Once your dough has rested in the fridge for at least 2 hours, it’s time to roll the dough out with a rolling pin – you can add a sprinkle of flour onto your work surface to prevent the dough from sticking to the surface. When the dough is rolled out, you will need to cut out the different parts using the template.
Once all the different shapes have been cut out, equally spread them out onto different baking trays with baking paper, so the pieces aren’t touching. The gingerbread pieces will take around 6-8 minutes to bake in the oven at 170°c.
To ensemble the house, make sure you have left the gingerbread pieces to cool for 15-20 minutes before you make it, or you can freeze them for any upcoming events.
The best part about making a gingerbread house is the decorating part – this is where you can get very creative! To decorate you can add food colouring to your icing, buy some tasty sweets and chocolates to decorate your house with or keep it minimalist with simple white icing. To start putting the house together, you will need to glue the pieces together with icing whilst it is semi-dry, so it sticks better.
At Citron, we recommend serving the gongerbread house with a glass of milk, a hot chocolate or a cup of tea in our bio-based tableware sets. The sets are eco-friendly as they are made from 100% plant-based materials, and they are even shatter-proof.
Happy Christmas!