Homemade Gingerbread House with Pattern & Recipe: Part 1

If you follow Me & My Veritas on Facebook, you’ll know already that I made two homemade traditional German-style Gingerbread Houses. The best is: All parts are edible! It was my first attempt with Gingerbread Houses and, I must admit, it was lots of work but also lots of fun! If you would like to make your own Gingerbread House, I will provide you here with a very detailed How-To guide. Have fun and please do not forget to send me your creations so that I can add them to my Your Makes Gallery.

List of the materials (for ONE Gingerbread House):

1. Liquid honey (525 g)
2. Butter (150 g)
3. Sugar (150 g)
4. Salt
5. Flour (900 g)
6. Baking powder (1 tea spoon)
7. Gingerbread spices (18 g or more)
8. Icing sugar (about 675 g)
9. Egg white (about 3)
10. Mini Wheats cornflakes (1 package)
11. Smarties (2 handfull)
12. Sandwich bag (about 3)
13. Cotton candy
14. Peppermint candy (4 pieces) and candy canes (6 pieces)
15. Icing pens (white, red, and green)
16. A pair of scissors
17. Various home appliances to give support (cups, box of tea, etc.)
18. This Gingerbread House Pattern

STEP 1: Fill honey, sugar, butter, and a dash of salt into a pan. Heat it up while stirring continuously.

Continue until there are no sugar crystals left. To test this, dip a teaspoon into the final liquid and lift it again. The liquid will drop back into the honey/sugar/butter solution. If there are no or almost not sugar crystals left on the tea spoon you can take the pan from the stove. Let the solution cool down.

STEP 2: While the honey/sugar/butter liquid cools down, prepare the flour mixture. Mix flour, baking powder, and gingerbread spices in a second bowl.

STEP 3: Sift the flour mixture onto the cooled honey/sugar/butter liquid and knead everything carefully. The final dough will be quite thick and dry. It will look like this:

STEP 4: The dough should rest now for at least 2 hours. I let mine sit in the kitchen at room temperature without covering it. If you want to store it for longer than 2 hours (e.g., over night), wrap the dough into clear foil, and store it in the fridge.

STEP 5: While the dough rests, you can cut out the shapes of the house (see pattern above). You should have 7 pieces in total: 1 base plate piece, 1 roof piece (shown in the pic below), 1 side wall piece (shown in the pic below), 1 front/back wall piece (shown in the pic below), and 3 chimney pieces.

STEP 6: When the dough is ready, roll it out until the dough is about 5 mm thick. Cut out 2 roof pieces, 2 side wall pieces, and 1 front and 1 back piece.

Also, cut out a plate base piece. I took a huge round lit as a guide. You can simply take the pattern I provide above.

For the chimney, cut the small and large rectangular pieces once each. For the piece with an angled side, cut 2 pieces (see picture below for clarity).

STEP 7: Place all pieces onto a baking sheet (covered with baking paper). If you like, you can cut out a window and a door from the front piece. Make sure to bake the door, too. Also, cut windows into the side walls, if you wish.

STEP 8: Bake all pieces at 200 deg C or 392 deg Fahrenheit: 10 min for the walls, 15 min for the base plate.

STEP 9: Let all baked pieces cool down properly. They will become somewhat harder and more robust.

Now you are ready to assemble the Gingerbread House. I will show you how in Part 2 of this tutorial.

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