December is the time to bake gingerbread.
This master class is for those who have long dreamed of their own gingerbread house, but do not know how to approach it. It’s only scary at first, of course - on the forums they talk about the correct gingerbread dough, caramel windows, some unknown icing and other subtleties of the process.
Don’t listen to anyone, the most important ingredients in our business are not overseas spices, but patience and time. If you have enough of both, then everything will definitely work out!
It would be nice to find a volunteer who will meekly wash the mountains of soiled dishes and sweep the floor, because you won’t have time for a day or two.
All gingerbread dough recipes are more or less the same. I will give one of them, repeatedly tested on myself without any damage to health:
Of what:
250g honey,250g sugar (preferably brown, but not essential),
100g butter,
3 eggs,
0.5 teaspoon of soda,
7 glasses of flour,
Cocoa and spices (ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, black pepper, allspice, vanilla, etc.) to taste.
How:
Melt 3 tablespoons of sugar in a saucepan until light brown. Remove from heat and cool slightly while stirring (otherwise, when adding water to boiling sugar, severe splashing may occur).
Pour in 0.3 cups of boiling water, stir well, add the remaining sugar and put on fire.
Bring to a boil and stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Place honey and butter in a large bowl. If the honey is candied, then it should first be melted in a water bath. Pour in boiling syrup. Stir. Honey and oil should completely dissolve. Add cocoa and spices. 
Cool until warm. Add eggs and beat lightly. 
Add 3-4 cups of flour, stir thoroughly. It is advisable to sift the flour through a sieve.
Pour the dough out of the bowl onto the table, gradually adding the remaining flour. Flour may not be completely used.
The finished dough should resemble plasticine, not stick to the table or hands, but at the same time roll out easily.
Place the dough in a bowl, cover with a napkin and put it in the refrigerator, then forget about it for an hour or two. 
Many people prefer to bake ready-made parts of the house; this does not seem very convenient to me. During transportation to the baking sheet and during the baking process, they can become quite deformed. I prefer to bake cakes, and only then “build” a house from them.
Roll out the dough into sheets 5-7mm thick and bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 180 degrees. We do the same with the remaining dough.
Use baking paper, it saves a lot of nerves.
While baking the cakes, do not forget to close the windows and doors tightly, otherwise the neighbors will come running to the smell and eat everything, but we have completely different plans.
Now the most important thing is to overcome the temptation to give up everything, cut the cakes into many, many gingerbread cookies and eat them.
It’s better to eat a cookie and start designing your future house. If drawing is difficult, then the Internet will help you, you can download from there even a church with a bell tower, even a deer with a sleigh, or even a royal palace.
I decided to draw the template myself. The house itself is more than standard, but I played with the roof a little, let it be beautiful.
So, the cakes are ready, there is a pattern. At this stage, it is already permissible to feel a little proud of yourself.
Make sure all pieces fit well on the cake layers. 
In addition to a couple of roof slopes, two side walls and two facades, depending on the design of the house, we may need auxiliary parts for “load-bearing partitions”. If you wish, you can make a base crust; I decided to do without it. In my case, there won’t be whole roof slopes either; the trim will go to the roof.
But the auxiliary parts will be: two transverse partitions, one I will cut out according to the facade template, the second - a rectangle with sides equal to the length and height of the house. They will support the roof and give the house additional strength.
Let's start cutting out the parts.
To make your task easier, scratch the outlines of future parts on the cakes with something sharp. Shiloh will do just fine. Then take a sharp knife. We make the side cuts of the walls at an angle of forty-five degrees to make it easier to join them during assembly. 
The time has come for the windows, if you don’t care about caramel anymore, then don’t cut them out, leave them like that, and then draw them.
If the excitement hasn’t disappeared and your eyes still sparkle with a fanatical sparkle, welcome to the ranks of the most persistent! 
We place the parts with cut out windows on the parchment, face up, and cook the caramel.
In a small container (an enamel pot is the best) put ten spoons of granulated sugar and squeeze out lemon juice so that the sugar is slightly damp, no more. Place on a hot stove. With constant stirring, you will get caramel in a couple of minutes. It makes the most sense to go with a light golden color. Lighter - it can become sugary, darker - it’s already burnt.
Fill the window openings with caramel; this must be done quickly, before the mass thickens.
The optimal thickness of the “glass” is about 5mm.
To make the parchment easily separate from the caramel, wait until it hardens completely.
For now you can start decorating.
So, icing... Nothing more than ordinary sugar glaze - egg white beaten with powdered sugar. Beat the egg white thoroughly for about five to ten minutes, then add powdered sugar a little at a time and continue whisking until you get a thick, homogeneous mass, you can add a couple of drops of lemon juice. 
If desired, some of the glaze can be painted in different colors. I use food coloring for this. Cocoa, beet juice or spinach juice are also good.
Cover the resulting glaze with a damp cloth and place in the refrigerator for ten minutes.
It’s more convenient to paint the walls in a disassembled state, so that’s what we’ll do. Anyone who has a pastry syringe is great, but an ordinary plastic bag with a corner cut off is no worse.
We apply the patterns and let them dry thoroughly. We don’t throw away the remaining glaze; we will need it for assembly. 
Assembly!
In the center of the two auxiliary parts we make counter vertical notches: 
We connect the parts crosswise. Coat the joints with glaze. 
We apply a good layer of glaze to the side sections of the walls and the supporting structure and connect them together in the required order.
To fix the walls while drying, I use a simple system of four glasses of water.
Let it dry for several hours, or better yet, a day.
The final touch is the roof.
We attach the roof to the base. The same icing is used as glue. Let it dry and decorate.
To decorate the roof, you can use nuts, dried fruits, coconut or chocolate chips, monpensiers, ... Anything.
I have a composite roof made from scraps. I will hide the ugly joints under the “tiles”. 
Almonds, chocolate chips or cornflakes are ideal to imitate it. You can bake it, but I didn’t bother, so I’ll stick with flakes, they’re healthy.
We “glue” the tiles onto the glaze, starting from the slopes and methodically, row by row, going up. 
Chocolate pillows also look good: 
All! We wipe our forehead with our sleeve and, despite the slippers sticking to the floor sticky with powdered sugar, we rush to get the camera. And we take pictures, take pictures, until some Hansel and Gretel come running, and they will come running, you can be sure. 
To enhance the effect, light the house from the inside. When the house is eaten and the delights of your family have subsided, upload the photo to social networks - you are guaranteed numerous “likes”!
When you want to please your loved ones and bake them something truly fabulous, you can safely try baking a gingerbread house. This delicious dessert does not require any special baking skills, although you will have to devote some time to it to create a real tasty fairy tale.
Gingerbread house recipe step by stepThe “Fairy Tale” gingerbread house itself consists of three main components:
- Suitable small colorful candies;
- Protein glaze (icing);
- And a gingerbread base.
For candies, ready-made round-shaped lollipops like M&M's are best. But you need to prepare the icing and dough.
Preparing the dough for the gingerbread house:
There are a lot of options for suitable dough for a gingerbread house. The main condition when choosing a recipe is that the dough is plastic and shapes can be cut out of it. For this purpose, you can use a minimum of ingredients, or you can knead traditional dough for a New Year's gingerbread house.
Option 1. Honey-spicy doughYou will need:
3 cups sifted high quality flour;
4 tablespoons honey;
100 g of dry granulated sugar;
50 g fatty butter;
2 eggs;
1 teaspoon (level) of regular baking soda;
2 tablespoons (optional) cognac;
50 ml water;
1 teaspoon of spices (cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg);
Baking trays;
Parchment paper;
Templates for a gingerbread house.
Step by step preparation:
You need to pour water into a deep bowl. Send honey, sugar and butter here.
All ingredients need to be heated. It is very important to ensure that the mixture does not boil. The approximate warm-up temperature is about 70 degrees.
Then you need to add spices and half the measured flour to the mass. Don't remove from the fire!
Stirring quickly with a spoon or spatula, you need to brew the dough, avoiding the formation of lumps.
Advice. If, however, lumps cannot be avoided, a sieve can save the situation. Simply rub the finished mixture through it and the mixture will become evenly homogeneous.
In this form, the future dough must be allowed to cool. Then eggs and cognac are sent here.
And only then the remaining flour is added to the dough. At this stage, you need to knead it well so that the mass turns out very smooth.
Roll the finished dough into a ball, wrap it in cling film and place it in a cold place for 1 hour.
After this, you can cut out future parts of the house from the dough by rolling it out and using templates.
Bake all the parts on a baking sheet lined with parchment in an oven preheated to 190 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
Important! Make sure that the cakes do not dry out. When hot, they should be soft and only after cooling do the baked goods harden.
Option 2. Honey-ginger doughYou will need:
250 g fresh fatty butter;
1 glass of dry granulated sugar;
80 g natural honey;
2 fresh chicken eggs;
750 g of sifted high-quality flour;
1.5 tablespoons of ground ginger (can be replaced with fresh root, grated);
1.5 teaspoons of soda;
1.4 teaspoon of cloves;
1 teaspoon lemon juice;
Baking trays;
Parchment paper;
Templates for the walls of the house.
Preparation:
Place a deep bowl in a water bath and mix sugar, spices and honey in it. The mixture must be stirred frequently until the sugar is completely dissolved. After this, add eggs and butter here, without stopping heating the mass. Now you need to mix everything well so that the dough turns out without lumps.
Next, you need to add soda to the brewed dough and mix well again. And the final stage of preparing future cakes is adding sifted flour to the mass. After this, everything needs to be kneaded until the dough begins to lag behind the walls of the vessel.
In this form, the dough is rolled into a ball and cooled.
At this time, you can prepare a baking sheet and oven. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, and line the baking sheets with parchment paper.
You will also need templates for the house. You can choose any options.
After this, the chilled dough needs to be rolled out and the design of the future gingerbread house cut out of it. Bake individual parts for about 7 minutes.
Well, when all the cakes are baked, they need to be combined with icing and then decorated.
Preparing glaze (icing)You will need:
1 egg white;
150 g sifted powdered sugar;
1 teaspoon lemon juice.
Note: all components are indicated in minimum proportions and the required amount can be calculated based on how much finished glaze you need for decoration.
Preparation:
Using a whisk, beat the chilled egg white without trying to achieve a strong foam. The mass itself should be just foamy and white.
Then you need to add powdered sugar to the protein and mix everything well.
At the end, add lemon juice to the icing and stir thoroughly again.
House assemblyNow we will figure out how to make a gingerbread house. To connect all the details, you need to generously apply glaze along the edge of the cake and attach the desired part of the future gingerbread house to it. In this form, the connected cakes must be held a little so that the icing sets.
This is how all the parts are connected: walls, roof, etc.
Then the house can be decorated.
To do this, the glaze is placed in a pastry bag with a not very thin tube attachment. Drawings can be applied both to an already formed gingerbread house, and to its individual parts.
How to do this depends on your imagination. You can draw stripes, spirals, snowflakes, snow and other decorative elements. Well, you can generously sprinkle small candies on top of the finished gingerbread house.
Here are some options for decorating an elegant dessert.
After this, the finished gingerbread house fairy tale can be served at the festive New Year's table. Surely, it will become one of the main decorations of the upcoming feast. Ideal for Christmas too!
By the way, using these ingredients you can not only make a gingerbread house, but also bake gingerbread cookies and even decorations for the Christmas tree.
It all depends on your imagination and mood for the upcoming holiday magic, which will certainly happen if you really, really believe in it.
Despite all the apparent complexity, preparing such a house is quite simple. In addition, to save time when preparing the holiday, it can and even should be prepared in advance. It stores very well and only becomes tastier over time.
And also, a gingerbread house is not only a decoration for the New Year's table, but also an excellent sweet gift.
Place butter, honey, sugar and spices for gingerbread in a separate pan with a thick bottom. Place over low heat to heat, stirring the contents from time to time - the mass should become homogeneous. Heat until the sugar is completely dissolved, but under no circumstances let the mixture boil!
Note: You can prepare a mixture of seasonings for gingerbread (if you can’t buy ready-made ones) yourself - just mix 1 teaspoon each of ground ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom... Use the specified amount in the recipe, use the rest in other recipes .
Once the sugar has dissolved, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the grated lemon zest and fresh ginger.
Now you can measure the required amount of flour and mix it with baking powder and cocoa powder.
During this time, the mass will cool down a little and you can first stir in the eggs, one at a time, until smooth. And then add the sifted flour mixture with cocoa.
Knead the dough, adding additional flour to the work surface if necessary. The dough turns out to be very plastic, practically not sticking to your hands. And even if it seems to you that it is still sticky, I would not recommend “weighting” this dough with a large amount of flour - just knead it until smooth.
Then put it in some kind of sealable, airtight container (a bowl with a lid or just a food bag) and put it in the refrigerator for 10-12 hours (very convenient for the night).
Before you start working with the dough, take it out half an hour beforehand - let it warm up and soften a little, it will be easier to roll it out.
During this time, you need to decide on the size and type of house. You will have to draw and cut out patterns of parts from paper - the roof, front and sides.
After rolling out the dough, attach paper templates and cut out the required number of pieces from the dough.
2 pieces from each template.
From the remaining dough you can cut out decorative details at your discretion - a pipe, a fence, a Christmas tree... Whatever your imagination is enough for.
After all the decor, I still had dough left and from it I simply baked the base for the house.
Bake the house parts for about 10-12 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees, until a beautiful golden color. We must remember that for smaller parts the time may be shorter, otherwise they may burn.
Allow all baked parts to cool completely on a flat surface to avoid deformation.
And now it’s time to prepare the sugar-lemon glaze - this is both a decoration and a means of “gluing” the parts of the house together.
You need to squeeze out the lemon juice, strain it through a strainer to remove the seeds and any pulp.
If you have the opportunity to spend the whole day in the kitchen, don’t be lazy to make your own gingerbread house! This is an ideal decoration for the New Year's holiday and a great joy for little children, who, by the way, can safely be involved in the process.
Making a gingerbread house is a creative and fun task! By getting together with the whole family, you can develop a design, come up with an interesting design, and just have fun. So, let's start the process and prepare a gingerbread house, following the step-by-step recipe with photos!
Ingredients: 
For the test:
- butter - 120 g;
- honey - 200 g;
- ground ginger - 4 teaspoons;
- cocoa powder - 2 tbsp. spoons;
- ground cinnamon - 1 teaspoon;
- sugar - 100 g;
- baking soda - a small pinch;
- flour - about 300 g (how much the dough will take).
For caramel (gluing):
- sugar - 100 g;
- water - 40 ml.
For the glaze:
- lemon juice - 1 tbsp. spoon;
- egg white - 1 pc.;
- powdered sugar - about 150-200 g.
For decoration:
- colored caramel - 2-3 candies;
- chocolate pillows - about 100 g;
- any confectionery toppings - optional.
- side walls - 2 pcs. (107x120 mm);
- roof - 2 pcs. (90x140 mm);
- facade - 2 pcs. (105x160 mm, with the wall height being 107 mm);
- house base - 1 pc. (150x210 mm).
How to make gingerbread house frosting
Congratulations! You made your own gingerbread house! Unfortunately, gingerbread dough quickly becomes stale and hard. Therefore, if you want to have a tea party, it is better to do it immediately after preparation, or simply leave the house as decoration. We wish you pleasant and happy holidays!
The wonderful tradition of making a gingerbread house with your own hands before the New Year and Christmas holidays came to our country not so long ago from Europe. The art of creating these edible architectural masterpieces originated in Germany in the 19th century and quickly gained popularity, spreading to neighboring European countries. Gingerbread houses not only became an obligatory holiday decoration for people's homes, but also became a fixture at Christmas fairs and special exhibitions, where you could even get some nice prize for them. So, for more than 20 years, in the charming Norwegian town of Bergen, shortly before Christmas, a real gingerbread town has been opening, for which local residents create edible exhibits of amazing beauty and originality.
An important prerequisite for the emergence of the gingerbread house culture was the creation in the Middle Ages of a special type of dough, the products from which did not go stale for a long time and remained edible even a couple of weeks after baking. Gingerbread dough and making houses from it allowed people not only to decorate their homes for the holidays, but also later to feast on these delicious decorations to the delight of all family members, young and old. In addition, this is a very aromatic, flexible and very easy-to-prepare dough, which is a real pleasure to work with for both beginners and advanced cooks.
Today I want to tell you in detail how to make a gingerbread house with your own hands, making sure to involve your friends, children and other family members in this exciting activity. There is nothing particularly difficult in making a house, and I will try to reveal all the secrets and possible pitfalls of this process so that you can easily create your own unique and inimitable culinary and architectural masterpiece. A homemade gingerbread house can serve as a wonderful element of New Year's decor in your apartment, or go to a school exhibition or charity Christmas fair. At the end of the holidays, you can even arrange a ritual eating of the house, although personally I would not risk encroaching on my own work of art. But just in case, I advise you not to store it for more than two weeks before eating it.
Be sure to try making a gingerbread house at home with your family and friends. This is a great holiday activity that will help you and your children develop their imagination and unleash their creative abilities, and in addition, it may well become your new family New Year's tradition!
How to make a gingerbread house with your own hands:, and,INGREDIENTS:
- 420 g flour
- 150 g honey
- 80 g sugar
- 1 pack vanilla sugar
- 90 g butter
- 2 small eggs
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- ground spices: 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp. cardamom, pinch of cloves, pinch of nutmeg
Glaze No. 1:
- 1 egg white
- 100 g powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. lemon juice
Glaze No. 2:
- 1 egg white
- 200 g powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. lemon juice
Decorations:
- colored sprinkles
- multi-colored jelly beans
- coconut flakes
COOKING METHOD:
1. In order to make a gingerbread house with your own hands for the New Year, first knead delicious and aromatic gingerbread dough for it. To do this, put sugar, honey, vanilla sugar and diced butter in a small saucepan.
2. Heat the honey mixture over low heat, stirring occasionally, until all components are combined into a thick, homogeneous mass. Do not bring the mixture to a boil, as the honey will lose its beneficial properties. 
3. Cool the mixture for 10 - 15 minutes until slightly warm, then add eggs and ground spices to it and mix thoroughly. 
4. Pour the honey mixture into a deep bowl for kneading the dough and gradually, in 2 to 3 additions, add flour sifted with baking powder into it. 
5. Knead the dough thoroughly until smooth with your hands or in a food processor using the dough hook attachment. The gingerbread dough should be tight, not sticky at all, and easy to form into a ball. 
6. Gather the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or even overnight.
For ease of rolling, I divided the gingerbread dough into 2 parts and shaped them into flat rectangles. But you can store the dough in the form of one large ball. If the dough has been in the refrigerator for several hours, it is better to take it out 20 - 30 minutes before working with it to simplify the rolling procedure.
7. Meanwhile, you need to cut out templates for the gingerbread house from thick cardboard. You can cut windows and a door into them in advance, but I did this on already rolled out dough “by eye”. In addition, you can even not cut out the windows at all, but paint them on the walls of the house with protein glaze.
8. Roll out half of the gingerbread dough on a floured surface into a layer approximately 5 mm thick.
Important! When rolling, keep in mind that the dough will slightly increase in size during baking. It should not be too thin, otherwise the structure of the house will be fragile, but walls that are too thick will be difficult to fix together.
9. Attach cardboard templates to the dough and cut out the details of the house. Transfer them to a baking sheet lined with parchment and lightly sprinkle flour on top. 
10. Bake in an oven preheated to 180°C on the lower level for 10 - 12 minutes. The dough for the gingerbread house should not brown; as soon as it starts to turn golden around the edges, it should be removed from the oven. 
11. Also roll out the remaining dough, cut it out and bake a base for a house of any shape and other details to decorate the entire installation that your imagination suggests - a chimney, a bench, Christmas trees, etc. You can make gingerbread cookies from the leftover dough and bake and eat them without leaving the cash register :) 
12. While the house parts are cooling, you should prepare protein glaze No. 1 to decorate the house. To do this, beat the chilled egg white at high mixer speed until foamy, gradually adding powdered sugar. 
13. Beat the mixture intensively for 2 - 3 minutes and add lemon juice at the very end. You should get a thick but flowing protein glaze. 
14. Pour the glaze into a pastry bag with a thin tip and decorate the house with it at your discretion. You can outline the windows, door, draw tiles on the roof, etc. 
15. While the icing is not dry, you can stick various decorations on it - colored confectionery sprinkles, multi-colored dragees like “M&M’s”, and also sprinkle the details with coconut shavings to imitate snow. After this, you need to let the glaze dry completely for several hours, otherwise it may smear or leak when installing the house parts. 
16. To fasten the parts and install the house, you should prepare protein glaze No. 2 with an increased amount of powdered sugar. It turns out thicker and stickier and dries faster, allowing you to better fix all the connections.
The first step is to install two adjacent walls of the house on a base baked from dough or some other surface (plate, tray). Protein glaze should be applied using a pastry bag to those surfaces that are fastened to each other, as well as to the base for the house. Having installed the walls, you can hold them for a while with your hands until the glaze hardens, or support them on all sides with objects of suitable size. In addition, to make the walls stand straighter and perpendicular to each other, you can insert a rectangular object inside the house.
Advice! If you see that the joints of the house parts do not fit together very well, for example, due to their deformation during the baking process, then you can lightly file them with a knife for a more accurate and convenient fit to each other.
17. Next, you need to immediately install the other two walls of the house and wait for them to be firmly fixed for about an hour. To prevent the protein glaze left for the roof from drying out during this time, cover the bowl with it with a damp towel. 
18. At the last stage of assembling the house, you need to attach two parts of the roof in turn, generously coating the joints with protein glaze.
Advice! During the process of assembling a gingerbread house, some problems may arise, for example, glaze leaking where it shouldn't, or, conversely, lack of glaze in some places. Spreaded glaze can be easily corrected or removed using a cotton swab, or applied to crevices or other necessary places with a brush.
After the house is completely assembled, you can further decorate it or correct any imperfections with the remaining protein glaze. In addition, you can decorate the base of the house with glaze and sprinkles, as well as glue and attach the remaining parts - a chimney, an entrance door, a bench, etc. Here the scope for your imagination is practically unlimited.
A cozy and elegant gingerbread house, made by yourself with the help of loved ones and relatives, will create a New Year's mood and will be the best home decoration for the upcoming holidays! 
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