Gingerbread Dough House Recipe

Note: This is a larger recipe than you will need, depending on how many houses you want to make!

Supplies:

Mini Gingerbread Cookie Cutters found on Amazon

Royal Icing

Ingredients:

*3/4 cup Butter, room temperature or Shortening

*1 and 1/2 cups Granulated Sugar

*1/4 cup Molasses

*1 cup Whipping Cream or Canned Milk or (1/2 cup Sour Cream and 1/2 Cup Milk)

*1 tablespoon Vanilla Extract

*1 teaspoon Salt

*4 and 1/2 cups All-purpose Flour

*1 teaspoon Cinnamon

*3/4 teaspoon Ground Ginger

*1/2 teaspoon Allspice

*1/4 teaspoon Ground Cloves

*4 teaspoons Baking Powder

Instructions:
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Pre-heat oven 350*F.
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Cream together in stand mixer: Butter, sugar, molasses, cream, vanilla and salt.
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Sift together in bowl: Flour, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves and baking powder.
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Slowly add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture in stand mixer on low speed and mix well and (scrapping down the sides of the bowl occasionally) forms a soft dough ball.

Hint: Refrigeration of the dough will always make the cookies roll, cut and cook a little better; also using a cooled 1/2 baking sheet with each batch of cookies helps too!
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Roll out cookie dough using half the dough at a time, so not to over working the dough and cut cookies with a Gingerbread House cookie cutters.
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Place cookies on a Silpat covered half baking sheet or cookie sheet of your choice sprayed with cooking spray or covered with parchment paper.
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Bake for 6-8 minutes or when edges barely start to turn a little darker brown but not burned. Also depends on the size of cookie.
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Hint: I almost always mix my cookies by hand but my daughter is a pastry chef and mixes everything in stand mixer but either way works great!

Large Batch Royal Icing Recipe:

*3 Egg Whites, room temperature (Use pasteurized Egg Whites if you plan on letting kids decorate and make Gingerbread House, because they may lick their fingers.)

*1/2 teaspoon Cream of Tartar

*5 cups Powdered Sugar

Instructions:

In a stand mixer with wire whip attachment add to the bowl the egg whites and cream of tartar and whip on medium high speed until frothy. Then add 1 cup at a time of the powdered sugar and whip until mixer makes stiff peaks about 5 minutes. Icing should be the consistency that when you cut a knife though the icing it doesn’t come back together.

Use a piping bag with desired tip for piping the Gingerbread houses together.