Gingerbread House
A fun activity that you can do with your kids during the holidays is make a Gingerbread House. This recipe provides you with a structurally sound house that tastes good, too! You will want to make it every Christmas.
Servings: 1 House
Calories: 3175kcal
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¼ cup butter softened
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 egg
- ½ cup molasses plus 2 tablespoon
- ¼ cup shortening
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- Gingerbread House Icing
Instructions
- In a large bowl of a stand mixer, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl then add in the egg, molasses, and shortening. Beat until mixture is well blended.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, salt and baking soda.
- Add half of the flour mixture to the molasses mixture until well combined, then add the other half of the flour mixture and mix until smooth and well mixed.
- Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
- Place parchment paper on the countertop and then place dough on top. Place another sheet of parchment paper on top of the dough. Roll out the dough to ¼ in thick.
- Using a template and a dough cutter, cut out the shapes needed for the gingerbread house. Using the parchment paper, transfer the cutout dough for the gingerbread house to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Chill dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, this helps to prevent dough from spreading while baking.
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
- Bake the gingerbread house for 15 minutes.
- Allow the gingerbread pieces to cool and sit at room temperature overnight until dried out. You may need to allow the pieces to dry longer at room temperature before decorating. This will help it be easier to build your gingerbread house.
- Decorate with Gingerbread House Icing.
Notes
- You can use a sharp knife to cut the gingerbread dough to the template, but I found it was easier to use a dough cutter to make nice straight lines.
- If you want, you can lay cooled gingerbread pieces on a paper towel to help the gingerbread house dry out overnight.
- If the paper is sticking to the dough, use a little flour to help it keep from sticking. You can also cut out the template using parchment paper.
- Baked gingerbread pieces can be baked up to 1 week ahead of time.
Nutrition
Calories: 3175kcal | Carbohydrates: 515g | Protein: 45g | Fat: 106g | Saturated Fat: 44g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 19g | Monounsaturated Fat: 35g | Trans Fat: 9g | Cholesterol: 286mg | Sodium: 1632mg | Potassium: 2969mg | Fiber: 11g | Sugar: 227g | Vitamin A: 1662IU | Vitamin C: 0.1mg | Calcium: 461mg | Iron: 27mg