Houses Made of Gingerbread! Who doesn’t love Gingerbread houses? I do, I can tell ya that – although I would never consider eating them after my Snot Gobblins put their hands all over them, but that’s just me – a sorta “germaphobe” at times. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll judge you if you eat them. No really – I won’t.
I bought a Gingerbread House Mold from Pampered Chef a few years back, and I love it. Although I’m going to take a minute and get on box here: Would it have killed them to include 2 of them? It only does half a dang house, so it’s going to take about 10 hours to bake 5 houses – because it has to cool between baking – and that stone takes forever to get cool enough to touch again. What the French, Toast?
My BFF did them for me, since I was still recovering and it literally took her 10 hours. But she was a trooper for sure! Thanks Raputa!
She also used the gingerbread cookie roll from Groceryland, but it’s ok. Not gonna eat ’em anyway.
So really, these are pics of NON-Gluten Free houses, but I’ll post a great gluten free recipe at the bottom of this post for you. I mean, I can’t really complain…she did a great job! And I am thankful, so very thankful that she has been here to pick up the slack for me. Couldn’t ask for a better friend. I mean that.
She baked them up real nice and then we assembled them for the little people with Royal Icing so there wouldn’t be any meltdowns. Well, they did complain because we made them wait until after dinner to decorate, but I explained to them that if the icing didn’t have time to get hard, they would fall apart. They bought it, but they weren’t happy about it at all.
I got some shots of them in action – using my 50mm lens because it was too much trouble to dig out another lens. I was Le Tired.
(Honestly, if you can’t handle me blurting out song lyrics, lines from movies or comedic phrases, we can’t be friends. I’m jus’ sayin’!)
Take a gander of pure joy and supreme happiness! They had a blast! Another great one for the old memory books!! You can click on each image to see it larger, too!
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Here is that recipe for gluten free gingerbread cookies – I love this site! A few things to note:
Gingerbread houses need to have structural integrity or they will collapse. You can achieve that when using the mold by putting just enough dough into it and pressing it in. If you fill it to the top of the molds, it will expand due to the leavening agents in the dough. You should also bake just a few more minutes than you normally would – you don’t want to burn it – but you want it to turn out like a crunchy cookie. Soft cookie = disaster! So bake it a little longer to get it a tad bit harder. That’s what we did and they were perfect!
Use only Royal Icing for these houses – it dries like cement, no lie. You will also have to wait about an hour between assembling them and decorating them because if it doesn’t set, they will come apart and break while you are trying to decorate.
Royal Icing Recipe – Makes 2 cups which is enough for 1 house:
4 c powdered sugar
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp Cream of Tartar
Mix for about 6 to 7 minutes until it forms peaks and then plop it into a piping bag. If you don’t own piping bags, use a Ziploc but remember not to cut the hole too big, mmmmkay?
There – just my two cents! Good luck! If you make some – come back here and share some pics because I really want to see them!
Merry Christmas Everyone!
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