Our favorite gingerbread house recipes

Best Gingerbread House Recipes

You�d be amazed at the number and variety of gingerbread house recipes! Gingerbread can be a cookie, a bread-like product or an entire house! You�ll find recipes from simple to more elaborate throughout this website. Here are a few of the best gingerbread house recipes that we've found.

Recipes For Gingerbread Houses And Their Parts

There are several key parts to gingerbread houses all of which you need to carefully consider. The gingerbread recipe itself is a very important ingredient as is the Royal Icing that you use and finally the decorations. We�ll leave those for the next pages and here we�ll focus on the overall building of a gingerbread house using a high quality recipe.

The Model

First things first, you need a model to use. The best way to get the gingerbread house recipes to come out the way that you want them to is to design a working model of your house. For this, you need some thin cardboard. Here are the shapes of the pieces that you�ll need. These sizes can be changed to fit your actually house design, though. Don�t stick with them if you want a larger house or a smaller one. Yet, the scaling should remain the same.

Roof: For the roof, cut out 2 rectangular pieces of gingerbread. 7 inches by 11 inches is a great start.

Side Walls: 2 rectangles, 5 inches by 8 inches.

End Walls (& gables as one piece): This is the hardest part of the pattern. To help you to see what you need, consider a square with a triangle sitting on top.

The square should be 5 inches and the triangle should be 5 inches across the bottom (where it's connected to the square) and 4 inches tall (from the bottom line to the point at the top). This will look much like the 2-dimensional house most young children learn to draw.

Make two of these End Walls (for the front and the back of the house.)

Feel free to cut out a frame for a door in your design as well. I like to cut a small rectangle out of the front piece and then cook it separately. Then, it can be re-attached as a partially-opened door later. Once you've gotten the hang of it, you can cut out windows on all Wall pieces and even the door itself before baking.

Gingerbread House Recipes: The Dough

Ingredients:

1 cup of butter that has been softened
1 � cup of packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons of dark molasses
1 � cup of granulated sugar
6 eggs
6 cups of all purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon each of ground ginger, ground cinnamon and allspice

Directions:

Cream butter and sugars. Stir in eggs and molasses.
Sift all dry ingredients together separately.
Mix the dry into the wet ingredients just until combined. Don�t over mix.
Knead dough on floured surface until completely combined.
Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour.
Roll out dough on a floured surface. You are looking for about � of an inch in thickness.
Use your cardboard cut outs to help you to cut out the right sized parts for the gingerbread houses. This gingerbread house recipe should provide enough for the sizes of the house that are listed here.
Bake on a buttered cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes on 325 degrees F or until slightly firm. Cool completely.

* Tip from reader Sean Ross from Alberta, Canada: If you egg-wash the gingerbread prior to baking, the royal icing will bond stronger. (Thank you Sean!)

These basic gingerbread house recipes are just the start. You can find plenty more if you'd like a different flavor or if you are looking for a more bread-like consistency. Play around with several until you find the one that's right for you.

Next Step... Choose an Icing Recipe

Have your own favorite gingerbread house recipes? Or have a question? Please Contact Us!

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