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! 
The New Year and Christmas holidays are already upon us. Along with elements of Western culture, the fashion came to us during the New Year holidays not only for Santa, Christmas wreaths, deer, but also for gingerbread houses.
Today for you are several recipes for gingerbread houses with step-by-step photos, as well as a video master class from Tatyana Litvinova on how to bake and beautifully decorate a festive gingerbread house!!!
Gingerbread house No. 1
For the test:
4 cups flour
salt
1 packet of baking powder
200 g butter
200 g powdered sugar
5 tablespoons of liquid honey (if the honey is candied, heat it in a water bath)
4 egg yolks
Spices 1 tsp:
ground ginger,
cinnamon (this is to taste, because not everyone likes cinnamon),
zest of 1 lemon,
cardamom,
anise
Cooking method:
1. Knead the dough, wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for several hours.
This dough is very tasty and fragrant, but you need to work with it very carefully.
2. To build our house, we need to cut out templates. The wall is 15 cm wide and 17 cm high.
3. From each such template we need to cut out two parts from the dough - these will be two of the four sides of our house.
4. And one more template for the two remaining sides of our house.
The template is 17cm long and 7cm wide.
5. The roof template is 22 cm long and 14.5 cm wide.
6. On a sheet of parchment, roll out the dough into a layer 5-6 mm thick. If you roll it thinner, the gingerbread will be too dry.
We attach ready-made templates and cut along the contour.
We remove the trimmings and transfer the cut out parts along with the parchment to a baking sheet
7. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven at 180oC for 20 minutes.
8. After baking, while the dough is still hot, cut out the details of the doors and windows using the same templates cut out of paper.
9. Cut out while the pastry is hot. Cut the cut out window in half lengthwise. These are future shutters. Cool all parts on a wire rack.
10. Now we cut out the windows in the side walls of the house.
11. From the remaining dough, cut out the roof of the house, Christmas trees, a pipe, small stands for the Christmas trees, any interesting details and figures.
12. This is what the windows look like from the inside. We attach the marmalade to the cut out windows using a glaze of powdered sugar and egg white.
13. Making white glaze or icing:
It simultaneously replaces paint for painting on the house and glue for gluing parts together.
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 exciting 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!
For the test:
- wheat flour - 260 g;
- butter - 100 g;
- sugar - 120 g;
- baking powder for dough - 1 tsp;
- egg - 1 pc.;
- ginger root - a piece 3-4 cm long;
- ground cinnamon - 1 tsp;
- cloves - 5-6 pcs.
For the glaze:
- powdered sugar - approximately 0.5 kg;
- 2 egg whites;
- food colorings.
To decorate the house:
- roasted shelled peanuts, almonds, cashews or other nuts;
- confectionery topping;
- powdered sugar.
You will also need:
- paper or tracing paper;
- a tray on which the house will be assembled;
- molds;
- cream injector.
Grind softened butter, egg and sugar. Add cinnamon, cloves (it must first be crushed into dust), ginger (it must be grated). Mix all this thoroughly and gradually add flour and baking powder, constantly stirring. Knead the dough - it should be manageable and non-sticky.
Now you need to make parts from the dough.
We make drawings of parts from paper or tracing paper (2 longitudinal walls, 2 transverse walls (end) with a triangle - the base of the roof, 2 roof slopes, 3 pipes).
This is for home. For other elements, shaped cookie cutters are suitable - we use them to cut out Christmas trees, animals, Santa Claus, etc.
Roll out the dough thinly (5 mm thick) and cut out parts from it using stencils. Very carefully transfer to parchment (by the way, you can cut it directly on it, the dough will be more intact) and bake in an oven preheated to 180 ° C for 5-7 minutes (the dough should be slightly browned). Then take it out and put it on a flat surface to cool.
Now we make icing icing for gluing and decorating the house. Stir the powder, whites and dye to the desired consistency - like thick sour cream for gluing the parts of a house, for painting - thinner, for voluminous decorations - thicker.
To work with icing, it is most convenient to use a pastry bag or just a plastic bag with a cut off tip. To paint the parts, take a brush.
First we assemble the house, then we decorate it.
The windows of the house can be cut out (both before baking and after it), or they can be drawn with icing. So is the door.
The walls of the house can be decorated with marmalade and nuts (by the way, 2 “lemon drops” marmalades make round windows in the house). You can also make windows in the following way: before baking, cut out window openings and paint transparent colored candies in them. During baking, the candy melts and creates candy-colored glass in the windows.
The house door can be painted with caramel or chocolate.
So, the details of the house are ready and decorated. We immediately look for a stand or tray on which we will assemble the house. First we assemble the walls and ends of the house, applying icing to the joints. Leave it for a while - let it dry. Then we attach the roof slopes, hold it longer: if it is not glued well, then it may move later. Lastly, we glue the chimney and, when it dries, glue it to the end of the house.
We coat the whole thing with icing and decorate the bottom with nuts. Again, we leave the house to dry thoroughly, while we ourselves paint and decorate gingerbread trees, snowmen, animals and other additional figures.
It’s easy to make a Christmas tree from three parts using this stencil:
When the gingerbread house dries, we begin to paint it: we draw shutters on the windows, paint the walls, and decorate with garlands of thick icing. We cover the roof with glaze and decorate it with icing, imitating snow and icicles hanging from the roof. Sprinkle everything with powdered sugar on top. Around the house we place the figures that we have prepared (they can be stuck into small piles of thick icing). Ready!
It is not necessary to make the gingerbread house big; it can be gingerbread houses for tea.
Gingerbread houses are rather a European tradition. In Russia, they traditionally made printed gingerbread cookies (that is, printed using a mold - a board with a pattern carved into it) and sculpted.
One of the fun and interesting activities during the New Year holidays is baking a gingerbread house. No winter holiday is complete without this traditional dessert. Almost every family has its own proven recipe, which is passed down through generations. What remains the same is the process of assembling and decorating the sweet decorations.
Baking a gingerbread house at home is very easy. How to do it? Find all the answers in this article.
- Prepare the dough you often use to bake gingerbread. Place it in a bag and leave it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
- While the dough is resting, make templates for the house. First, decide on the size of the sweet decor. Then cut out a rectangle and a square with a pointed top from cardboard. Take out the dough and roll it out to a thickness of 1 centimeter.
- Transfer the templates to the layer. In total you will need 4 rectangles and 2 shapes for the front (back) part of the house.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Bake the ginger dough pans for 15 minutes. Determine the degree of readiness by piercing a toothpick. If it comes out dry, then the dough is ready.
- While the cakes are still warm, trim the edges according to the template. Do this with a sharp knife so that the cutting line has smooth edges. Such actions will ensure a tight connection of all parts of the house when assembled.
- The icing will help to connect the dough patterns together. Beat the whites with powdered sugar until peaks form.
- The cakes must cool completely before assembling. Brush the side of each base with the egg white mixture. Lift the pieces of decor one by one and apply them to each other.
- To ensure the stability of the structure, place a glass in the center of the house. Move it from one corner to another while connecting the shapes. Let the glaze harden a little.
- Once the walls are assembled, proceed to install the roof. Brush the edges of the cake with glaze. Place this side against the frame of the house. Keep the mold in this position for 5-10 minutes until it is firmly attached to the rest of the cakes.
- Install the second roof layer in the same way. Use your free hand to hold the two cakes together.
How to make a gingerbread house - decorating with sweet decor - Prepare or buy ready-made brown mastic. Instead of fondant, use a melted mixture of chocolate, butter, powdered sugar and caramel. Roll it out and cut into small rectangles.
- Push strips on one side of the mastic using a toothpick. This will give you a tile-shaped pattern.
- Decorate the roof with these blanks. Start gluing the fondant onto the cakes from the bottom row. Place each next tile segment above the previous one. Or in a checkerboard pattern.
- Make an imitation of logs near the house from sweet straws. Cut it into pieces of the required size.
- You can secure the sweet sticks with icing. First apply it to the entire surface of the walls of the house, then install the tubes.
- Decorate the end of the roof with individual straw sticks and strips of mastic. Attach all parts to the icing.
- Cut out the door and window from brown mastic. Also make stripes on them or carved edges. The handle for the door will be a sugar bead.
- Place the figures on the house before the mastic hardens. Or brush the back of them with glaze.
- Place the attic window between the doors and the roof. Using a knife, apply a design on it in the form of two wings.
- Cut out the Christmas wreath from mastic using shapes of different diameters. Brush the surface with syrup and sprinkle with green sugar.
- Attach the decor above the doors. Decorate the wreath with red edible beads.
- Sprinkle the top of the dessert with powdered sugar. So the house will be covered in snow. Leave it to harden overnight, then transfer to a platter and serve.
Gingerbread house options Above was just one way to decorate New Year's decor. Show your imagination and make a gingerbread house an original decoration for your holiday table.
Now you know all the secrets of preparing a traditional Christmas treat. The process of creating a gingerbread house will seem like a game if you stick to such a simple master class. Therefore, you can bake it with your children. Bon appetit!
For a more detailed recipe for baking a gingerbread house at home, watch the video:
