Easy gingerbread cookie house

The best gingerbread house cookies you’ll ever make. With a perfect blend of warm spices and molasses to create the perfect holiday treat, what else could you possibly ask for?

Hello my bakerific friends! I’ve been away from home for so long and to be honest, holidays never really are the same without family so I can’t wait to be home. Upon my absence, lil’ bun has been picking up the slack and baking up a storm!

I may be the bread baking expert, but when it comes to decorating? She’s the piping bag master! So here’s a guest post written by her! I hope you like it 🙂

As you all know Christmas is right around the corner and at school my teacher decided to have a gingerbread house competition. Since it was a baking course, it wouldn’t be real competition unless you were making it from scratch.

Building a gingerbread house

My partner and I decided to have a house, a sleigh and some gingerbread people walking around the north pole. So we got out of our pieces and put it in the oven and poof! just like that, our gingerbread house was brought to life.

You have to be careful not to put your pieces to close together or else they will stick to each other. Originally we made some Reindeer except they got stuck together so we ended up having them as a small snack instead.

We used a lot of candy and royal icing to decorate the house and believe me, decorating is a lot harder than it looks. There may have had a few fallen soldiers but the end, it turned out all right. We even got first place and won customized aprons!

Gingerbread house recipe

Ingredients

• 5 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 3/4 cup molasses
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon in a large bow
2. In a medium bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar together until fluffy. Then stir in the molasses, water, egg, and vanilla until smooth.
3. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients, until they are completely absorbed and a dough forms.
4. Divide dough into 2 halves, and pat each down to 1 1/2 inch thickness. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. This will help the cookies absorb the flavors of the spices and hold up to you shaping them.
5. Preheat oven to 350F.
6. Roll the chilled dough out to 1/4″ thick pieces on a lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters.
7. Place cookies 1″ apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. They may still be soft to the touch but they will firm up as they cool.
9. Remove from the baking sheet onto cooling racks. When cool, the cookies can be frosted with the icing of your choice.