Monday 9 December 2013

How To Make A Gingerbread House

I was sent an amazing Lakeland Gingerbread House Kit in order to take part in a challenge to build a Gingerbread House.
 

The kit contained everything I needed except for an egg and lemon juice for the icing and was really easy to use.






Although it's totally gorgeous it felt like cheating and I decided it needed an extra something, so, with help from my able 3 year old assistant, I made more Gingerbread...

 I took my recipe for Gingerbread from the BBC Good Food website

Ingredients
  • 350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for rolling out
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 125g/4½oz butter
  • 175g/6oz light soft brown sugar
  • 1 free-range egg
  • 4 tbsp golden syrup
Method

Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon.
Add the butter and rub together or blend in a food processor until the mix looks like breadcrumbs.
Stir in the sugar.
Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, add to the flour/sugar mix and beat with a wooden spoon or food processor until the mixture clumps together.
Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in clingfim and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.


It's important to allow the dough time to rest and you will find it much less sticky and far easier to work with.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper

Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm/¼in thickness on a lightly floured surface.
Cut out the shapes and place on the baking tray, leaving a gap between them.


Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. Be really careful because it will be very soft and bendy and easily broken when it's still warm.

Only once completely cool can you decorate and make your chosen creation. My 3 year old was VERY helpful with the faces...


We like our nativity scene, but decided we wanted to make something REALLY special, and we are The Brick Castle, so we made a castle.

I had to find a suitable template, and cut 4 pieces of equal size. I used the rounded shape to make my windows.


Before it was cool, I used a Lego brick to make 'bricks' on the gingerbread.


It all sticks together with Royal Icing - 1 egg white beaten until it's fluffy, add 250 g icing sugar and a few drops of lemon juice. It sets really hard quite quickly. 


My 16 year old brought me the perfect occupant for my house! A Lego Gingerbread Man.


I bought some sweets from the corner shop and chopped up some of my home made fudge
from 2 weeks ago. Coloured some of the icing and decorating could begin.




I'm really pleased with it and we've had great fun making both the castle and the house. No doubt the children especially will have great fun eating them!


Just for fun Sykes Holiday Cottages decided to try and find out how much it would cost and what you would need to build a lifesize Gingerbread House - the infographic below shows the results -a fairly reasonable £66, 037.05....I'll take 2....


I was sent my Lakeland Gingerbread Kit to take part in this challenge.

Update - We won!!! Yeeay! There were some gorgeous entries but we were chosen as the winners - thank you so much to Sykes Cottages! 


42 comments:

  1. They both look great! We have had those kits before and they always look lovely, in fact we normally don't eat them they look too good! I've always fancied making my own gingerbread, I must give it a go!

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    1. It is really easy - and it's lovely for the children to make shapes with :)

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  2. That looks great, loving the fudge bricks! When can we eat it? :p

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  3. these look amazing! i want the lakeland kit for myself as i have no problems with cheating :D love the castle too tho so cool! and the lego gingerbread man!

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    1. Awww, thank you! Get one - it's great fun for the children :D

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  4. I have two kits here so we'll be making one soon. These look too pretty to eat though!

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    1. I must admit it'll be hard to let anyone snap a bit off after all that effort :D

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  5. such fun, and I am looking forward to giving this a go with my able assistant! Loving the castle...

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  6. The castle looks amazing!!! well done x

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  7. Love it - what a fabulous gingerbread scene, the castle is fantastic!

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  8. How brilliant, we have a kit to make a house soon. Love the castle

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    1. Thanks Angela! It's great fun, the children love doing it :)

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  9. Jenny that is amazing!! My friend made us one last year, but she's moved to Shetland and I just haven't even thought about making one myself. Think we'll do gingerbread cookies instead this year.

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  10. Wow, how cool is that?! And yummy too.

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    1. Thank you Laura :) Hopefully yummy - my youngest 2 seem to think so anyway, they've eaten their own bodyweight in gingerbread this weekend :D

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  11. Wow, awesome! They are the only two words I can think of...oh, actually i have thought of a third - SHARE!!!!!

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    1. :D Hahaha....cheers Kel! You are more than welcome - I refused to let mine break it tonight, but if you decide to drive the 90 miles I'll let you eat as much as you want :D

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  12. Absolutely amazing! Respect to everybody that dares on doing something like this! Will it resist until Christmas?
    Thank you fit linking up with #fridayfooddie - pinned and stumbled

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    1. Thank you so much! I'm really touched, what lovely comments. Thank you Otilia :)

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  13. I absolutely love the castle, brilliant! :) I am currently living in the land of gingerbread... Luckily I like it, it's pretty much everywhere right now! :D

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    1. Hahaha....I'm kind of jealous :D
      Good job you like it - have a great Christmas :)

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  14. Looks amazing! We've used the bbc good food recipe to make gingerbread (men not castles!) a few times and it's delicious! I want that Lego gingerbread man, it's amazing! Did it come in one of your christmas sets?

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    1. Thanks Jen! The gingerbread man is from one of the minifigure series - he's really easy to spot through the bag too because of his flat head! :)

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  15. That's amazing! Well done! You are definitely the worthy winner! x x

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    1. Awww, thank you so much! That's really sweet of you to say. I did really love the roof on your s with all the fruity sweeties! :)

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  16. Just popping by to say thanks again for linking up with #recipeoftheweek. I've Pinned and Tweeted this post and I'm delighted to have it pride of place in the showcase x

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    1. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it, you've said such lovely things and it means an awful lot to me :) x

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  17. That is awesome, you are so creative!!! Well done on winning... much deserved!!

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  18. Oh, wow, lovely, we took the easy way and used a bought in one from IKEA :-). But I ended up making our own icing as the kit didn't have any! Linking in from #Firday Foodie.

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    1. Thank you so much! The kits are very good though, and you can still personalise, I bet it looks lovely :)

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  19. WOW - that looks like Rapunzel's castle!! Awesome job :)
    #Pintorials

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  20. Looks fab - def want to do this with my kids this year!

    Ashleigh

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    1. Do it! It's so much fun, but you won't want to eat it afterwards! :D

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  21. bookmarked!!, I really like your blog!

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