The Gingerbread
House is not truly a Christmas tradition in South Africa, but I have an
extremely soft spot for any fairytale house.
For years I have been wanting to bake and decorate a Gingerbread House,
but I was scared. I heard about houses crumbling, tumbling and
turning soft.
Apart from sharing my tips
and recipe with you today, I write to tell you that YOU CAN MAKE A GINGERBREAD
HOUSE. I must confess it was the most
beautiful and easiest baking project I have ever tackled. It can be time consuming, but it need not
be. You can spend as much time on this
fairytale house as you want to. I read these words somewhere and they came up
in my mind when I stood back and admired my little house: Fashioned in love was this special
gift, simply to give your heart a lift.
Please look out
for the tips and tricks underneath the recipe.
If you are scared to try this, then those tips and tricks are just what
you need to help you climb over the fence between the “I cannot” and the “I did
it”. Lets get started.
There are many
recipes you can use, I decided on one of Martjie Malan’s recipes from the
Afrikaans book Koekedoor Bak (Errieda
du Toit).
Gingerbread
Biscuits
Recipe
150 ml water
420 g brown sugar
90 ml soft brown
sugar
90 ml golden syrup
90 ml ground ginger
90 ml ground cinnamon
5 ml ground cloves
500 g butter
10 ml bicarbonate
of soda
1,1 kg all-purpose
flour
Method
1.
Place
all the ingredients, except butter, baking soda and flour, in a pan. Over medium
heat stir continuously until the mixture reaches boiling point.
2.
Remove
from the heat and add the butter, cut into small squares.
3.
Add
the the bicarbonate of soda after all the butter has melted. Whisk with hand
whisk until well blended.
4.
Pour
into electric mixter’s bowl and allow to cool.
5.
Sift
flour over this mixture and turn mixer to lowest speed. It must form a dough.
6.
Press
the dough into the silicone moulds (see hints, tips and tricks). If you are
going to cut the house with cutters or manually you must leave the dough in the
fridge for at least two hours or over night.
7.
Bake
at 160 °C (oven with fan. 180°C without a fan) until properly baked and slightly brown at
edges.
8.
Leave
to cool and remove from mould. Place in airtight container over night.
9.
Decorate
with royal icing (or as preferred) and assemble.
Handy
hints, tips and tricks
I
obtained my mould at CNA long time ago.
However, just this week I noticed the very same mould for about R145.00
at a Bargain Books store. You can also
opt to hand cut your house. I did not do
that simply because I knew that my walls and roof would not match, no matter
how many times I measure. I have also more
than a year ago, ordered via Internet a gingerbread house cutter set. It is
made from stainless steel, but I have never used it. Though I plan to use it in
making a fairytale house from clay. Here
is a picture of my mould-set.
After
I pressed the still warm dough into the
moulds I covered them with glad wrap and left in the fridge over-night. (I do
not believe that this is a pre-requisite. I merely did it because I did not
have time to bake it immediately. My sister made her dough yesterday and she
baked hers immediately after she pressed the dough into the moulds.)
Remember
to bake the dough a bit longer than you would bake biscuits. I baked mine far
too long.
Do
not remove from the moulds until it has cooled completely. Mine popped out easily. Just remember that
most (if not all) cookie dough are still soft when you remove it from the oven.
It only crisps when it cools down a bit.
I waited until mine were firm, then I removed them and placed on cooling
rack to cool completely.
All
the recipes I have read and all the research I did indicated that once your house
elements has cooled completely you must put them in an airtight container over
night and decorate the next day. The
reason for this is, that the biscuits grow more crisp over time. If you
decorate too soon the dough may turn soft again.
Many
recipes suggest that you assemble the house and then decorate. I did not work
in that order. I have a dear friend who
have made many gingerbread houses in her life and she advised me to decorate
first and then assemble the house.
Herewith
the recipe for the royal icing: (I have
doubled the recipe when I made it, but I am sure that it will be enough if you
make it as it appears hereunder.)
Place the whites
of 2 eggs in the bowl of an electric mixer and whisk until foamy. Add 400 g of
confectioners’ sugar a bit at a time and whisk until it thickens. Add 10 ml of
lemon juice or 5 ml cream of tartar. (I prefer to use cream of tartar) The mixture must keep its form when you lift
the whisk. I added 5 ml vanilla essence (rosewater also works well).
Spoon the mixture
into different bowls and add color. I
used pink gel color. Cover each bowl
with glad wrap until you are going to use it.
You
can decorate the house in any manner you prefer. I have decided beforehand that I am not going
to use sweets etc. I only decorated with
royal icing and sugar decorations (pink pearls, silver balls and so forth). You
can even use sugar paste (fondant). The possibilities are endless. As are the colors. My sister's eldest daughter could not understand why me and my daughter opted for pink and white. She wants it to be red and green and white, which would also look amazing.
I
dreaded the assembly. Yet, here I was
and it was time to assemble the house.
My friend also advised me to rather use white baking chocolate to
assemble the house and not royal icing because the royal icing does take a
while to dry in the meantime you must hold the pieces of the house. I forgot to buy said chocolate and decided to
use the royal icing, of which was left a whole lot after I decorated the house
panels. It does take a while to
dry. I did not have patience to hold it,
so I stacked various groceries from the pantry in and around the house to keep it steady until
it dried. You must wait for the walls to
dry completely before you attach the roof, otherwise the whole construction
will crumble. Just remember, that if you are going to use baking chocolate to
buy good quality baking chocolate. And it must be baking chocolate because that
turns hard when it cools down, whereas plain white chocolate would not turn
hard enough to assemble the house once you have melted it.
And
it was done. My very own, and very first gingerbread house! It was the most
fun, easiest and most beautiful project I have ever assembled.
I had
a lot of dough left over, so I rolled it out and cut small houses. I
do not have a cutter but draw the figure on paper and cut it with a knife from
the dough. I baked these and decorated them as little houses with the royal icing I had left over. They went straight into
plastic bags and onto the Christmas tree.
Vera Nazarian wrote in her “Perpetual Calender of
Inspiration” that: “The Gingerbread
House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated
with many sweet culinary delights on the outside. But on the inside there is
nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls. It is not a real house—not until you
decide to add a Gingerbread Room. That’s when the stories can move in. They
will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first
gingerbread bite.”
So here is my Gingerbread House. The first story has already moved in. Make
you own and watch the stories move in, your children’s delighted faces and have
a blessed and peaceful festive season. I would love to hear how your little
fairytale house of stories turned out.
