Before the New Year and Christmas, the question always arises of what kind of interesting things to cook. I especially always want to please the kids with something sweet and unusual. Just for this case, ginger houses are suitable. They look somehow particularly cute and a bit magical. Gingerbreads themselves are not so interesting, but gathered in a fairy-tale house is a completely different matter. Children come from them in complete delight.
Christmas recipes are varied, but they all have one thing in common: the dishes prepared according to them are always special, very tasty and beautiful. Take at least the same gingerbread huts. Appetizing, brightly and richly decorated, they create a wonderful atmosphere of warmth and comfort on the eve of the holiday. Let's talk about how to make one of these wonderful treats.
What products are needed for the test?
So, to cook a gingerbread house, we should get these products:
- Sugar - 0.5 cups.
- Butter - one pack (200-260 g).
- Honey - 90 grams.
- Ginger - 1.5-2 teaspoons. You can take dry. It is sold in every supermarket.
- Flour - 0.75 kilograms.
- Soda - 1.3 tsp
- Lemon juice - 1 teaspoon.
- Clove - 1.6 tsp
- Icing sugar - 0.3 kilograms.
Ginger houses: a recipe for cooking
Having prepared all the products, you can begin to knead the dough. First, mix sugar and honey with all the spices, which play an important role. Put the whole mixture on a small fire. Honey will gradually melt and sugar will dissolve.
Then add butter, eggs. All this is thoroughly mixed on fire.
Then you need to add a little soda. The mixture will be foamed. But you still mix it well.
Then we introduce the sifted flour. Mix the contents of the bowl until the mass begins to separate from the walls of the dishes.
We got a very fragrant warm dough. Roll it into a ball and set to cool for 15 minutes.
Blanks for the house
So, we prepared the dough for the gingerbread house. The next stage is very interesting. Before you start baking, you should make blanks. We need to get cakes in the form of house parts. Let's think about how to do it. The easiest way is to prepare paper patterns, and already cut them out from the rolled dough. Thus, we will not bake simple cakes, but walls, roof, pipe. If you want, make the inhabitants of the tower: fabulous little animals, little man, you can even a snowman ...
What sizes will be the future paper patterns, you decide. It all depends on how small or large your gingerbread cookie house is .
In addition, you can cut several fir trees and a fence from the thick cardboard to enclose the building. You get a whole Christmas composition.
We would also recommend baking the base for the house. The finished construction itself will be easier to install and fix on the biscuit blank than on cardboard.
Cut out the details from the dough.
Take the finished chilled dough and roll it to a thickness of seven to eight millimeters. Then we apply our stencils and cut out the details with a knife. We do this very carefully so as not to damage the dough. Do not forget to cut windows and doors. With them, the house will be much more beautiful. But if this is difficult - it does not matter, it is quite possible to finish the cream with the necessary details and decor. But we'll talk about this later. In the meantime ...
Bake gingerbread cookies
Before sending the dough into the oven, cover the baking sheet with baking paper, lay the workpiece on it. We set the temperature on the stove to 190 degrees and boldly put the cookies inside. It will be baked for no more than fifteen minutes. Just do not overexpose it to the oven, otherwise the gingerbread cookies will be too dark and too dry.
Ready cookies should be cooled.
Glaze preparation
So, we already have the finished parts, it remains only to assemble our ginger houses. How? To do this, prepare the icing. We will cook it twice, because in one day it’s impossible to collect everything and decorate.
The protein of one chilled egg must be beaten with half a glass of powdered sugar. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice (necessarily freshly squeezed). The resulting glaze is placed in a pastry bag. We take the nozzle with the smallest slot and draw with it the contours of all the windows, walls and doors. The roof can also be decorated in the form of tiles.
Let the glaze thicken. When it dries a little, but has not yet completely hardened, you can decorate the details with multi-colored sprinkles, which are often used for Easter. Then the ginger houses will turn out even brighter and more beautiful.
We begin to collect the house
Leave our products to dry, and then proceed to the assembly of the tower. Change the nozzle on the pastry bag to a wider one. And then we begin to apply glaze on all future seams of the house. We carefully install each part of the facade on a cake stand, which we baked separately. After connecting the parts, we hold them for a while so that they can stick together a little.
Thus, we gradually install all parts of the house, applying glaze on the sides and bottom of the structure. Leave it all to dry. There will be enough nights.
For greater rigidity of the product, you can use toothpicks, propping up their walls until they dry completely. And you can neatly fasten the corners with them, covering it all with icing then.
New roof glaze
The next day, you need to beat a new portion of the glaze using the protein of one egg. With it, we will install the roof. First, put one part of the cream on the cream layer, press and wait until it sticks. We will install the second half in the same way. Here you already definitely need to resort to the help of toothpicks so that the roof holds well. By the way, some people prefer to decorate an already finished product, so as not to spoil all the beauty during assembly. See for yourself what’s more convenient for you.
The places of its connection will be thoroughly coated with glaze. Here are our ginger houses and ready.
Then you can install the details of the fence and the Christmas tree in the same way, put the pipe on the roof. The finished house should be left to dry, and then sprinkled with powdered sugar. Get a real winter composition. It all looks very fabulous and beautiful and fully claims to decorate the festive table. In general, Christmas recipes are such a miracle! They cheer up already at the stage of reading, what can we say about the finished delicacy!
Instead of an afterword
What is good about such recipes is that children can be involved in the cooking process. They can decorate some details on their own, taste the first gingerbread cookies. This will create a special, festive, New Year and Christmas atmosphere in the house. Ginger houses, the recipe of which we told you, is not just cookies, but handmade! Yes, what!
Such a composition will become the pride and decoration of the festive table. Although, of course, this is not an easy task and will require a lot of time and patience from the sorceress-mistress. But what a result! Moreover, you can add something of your own to the above recipe, and your ginger houses will not look like anyone else's. There is where imagination unfolds. Just a solid creative. And how much joy for the children! So try to create such a miracle for the festive table, and you will not regret your choice!