Daring Bakers – December 2009 – Gingerbread House

Posted at December 23, 2009

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

First was mixing up the sugar, cream and golden syrup (I substituted golden syrup for the molasses as I could just not find any!)
mixing

Then came the flour. I didn’t have a bowl big enough for all that flour and had to use two bowls instead. Once all the ingredients were added together, they came to the brim of the biggest mixing bowl I had and it took a lot of effort to keep it all inside the bowl!

dough

It made a lot of dough. A lot. This all rested in the fridge overnight while I ran to a Christmas party I was running late for (still covered in flour!)

The next morning, the dough was really quite dry and fell apart when I tried to roll it out. I put each piece into a bowl one at a time and added water until the dough felt better, then wrapped it up again and stuck them all in the fridge again for another 6 hours.

That improved the dough a lot. I was then able to roll it, cut it and bake it. The kitchen smelt great!

bakedpieces

I made up some royal icing (egg white, icing sugar and vinegar) and attempted to pipe on some decorations. My icing was a little too runny though and my piping skills were medicore at best.

icedpieces

The crappy roof icing was covered up with marshmallows instead and then I stuck the house together using a simple sugar syrup. Noting matched up and the roof kept falling off. Oh no! (This was fixed with a toothpick which was against the challenge rules – but the roof just would not stay on without it!)

house

I’ve had a small taste of the house – while not awful, it’s not the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten. This really is more for (dodgy) decoration than for eating.

Anna’s Recipe:
Spicy Gingerbread Dough (from Good Housekeeping)
2 1/2 cups (500g) packed dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups (360mL) heavy cream or whipping cream
1 1/4 cups (425g) molasses
9 1/2 cups (1663g) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoon(s) baking soda
1 tablespoon(s) ground ginger

Directions

1. In very large bowl, with wire whisk (or with an electric mixer), beat brown sugar, cream, and molasses until sugar lumps dissolve and mixture is smooth. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and ginger. With spoon, stir flour mixture into cream mixture in 3 additions until dough is too stiff to stir, then knead with hands until flour is incorporated and dough is smooth.

2. Divide dough into 4 equal portions; flatten each into a disk to speed chilling. Wrap each disk well with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until dough is firm enough to roll.

3. Grease and flour large cookie sheets (17-inch by 14-inch/43×36cm)

4. Roll out dough, 1 disk at a time on each cookie sheet to about 3/16-inch thickness. (Placing 3/16-inch dowels or rulers on either side of dough to use as a guide will help roll dough to uniform thickness.)

5. Trim excess dough from cookie sheet; wrap and reserve in refrigerator. Chill rolled dough on cookie sheet in refrigerator or freezer at least 10 minutes or until firm enough to cut easily.

6. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (149C)

7. Use chilled rolled dough, floured poster board patterns, and sharp paring knife to cut all house pieces on cookie sheet, making sure to leave at least 1 1/4 inches between pieces because dough will expand slightly during baking. Wrap and reserve trimmings in refrigerator. Combine and use trimmings as necessary to complete house and other decorative pieces. Cut and bake large pieces and small pieces separately.

8. Chill for 10 minutes before baking if the dough seems really soft after you cut it. This will discourage too much spreading/warping of the shapes you cut.

9. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, until pieces are firm to the touch. Do not overbake; pieces will be too crisp to trim to proper size.

10. Remove cookie sheet from oven. While house pieces are still warm, place poster-board patterns on top and use them as guides to trim shapes to match if necessary. Cool pieces completely before attempting to assemble the house.

Daring Bakers

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