Plan

You can’t make a gingerbread house in a day, nor would you want to. Many of the steps require a certain amount of time is left in between to make the build structurally sound, or for decorations to set.Once you have decided on your them, make sure you plan in enough time for the project. I’d allow at least a week’s worth of evenings/pockets of time for even a simple house.

Your recipe will guide you through the steps required, but to give an idea of the protracted nature of the project, consider the following. The dough needs to be thoroughly chilled before baking, to prevent the pieces spreading (four hours in the fridge, or overnight). Different sections of the walls will also need an overnight set to ensure they are structurally sound before putting the roof on, followed by the chimney(s).

The above time-delays are essential for structural stability, but there are other benefits to stretching the project out over a week or so. At points, your kitchen will look like a tornado has blown through: icing sugar covered worktops (and floors), scraps of cut-away biscuit dough here and there, little tools and utensils that you might use along the way. Everything needs cleaning and tidying away when not in use, to preserve your sanity if nothing else. Some of the steps are also tiring (rolling out dense construction gingerbread dough is quite a workout, stamping bricks in neat little lines across sheets and sheets of dough is quite tedious, and piping intricate details on the pieces requires a great deal of concentration and patience). It is best to take a good break between each step to prevent project fatigue setting in, and make sure each step is given your full energy and enthusiasm.

You can also plan carefully to make the steps as easy for yourself as possible. Making slightly more dough than you need gives you some leeway if a piece breaks, without having to make another batch. Arranging the template pieces edge-to-edge on top of the rolled-out dough will minimise the amount of cutting you have to do (each piece is cut twice: once before baking, and once after baking). Any left-over dough can be rolled into a ball and frozen for future projects, so there is no waste.

Use a ‘construction’ gingerbread recipe

It is important to use a construction gingerbread recipe. Construction gingerbread has a low water content and no raising agents, so it produces a dense, strong biscuit with no pockets of air that might weaken the build. Contrary to the advice bakers are most often given (‘buy the best quality ingredients you can afford’), on the basis that absolutely no-one is going to eat the house after it has been sitting on display for any length of time I’d recommend using budget ingredients for the most part. The only exception would be the spices: these are important because you want to smell the warm aroma of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg every time you pass the little house, even after a few weeks. If you find the scent fading too soon, a few drops of Christmas- scented oil on the board or house itself will refresh it (again, no-one is going to eat it!).My go-to recipe is here, but there are many variations are available.

Tips for baking

Care and accuracy when making the fundamental pieces of your house will pay dividends in the end results (or when it comes to making sure the walls line up with each other!), so it’s worth taking the time to get the basics right.

To make sure the pieces are the exact size of the template, follow the steps below:

• lightly prick the dough with a cocktail stick before it goes into the oven; these tiny holes provide an escape route for any moisture and air whilst the biscuits are baking and helps ensure the surface of the biscuits won’t be bumpy or uneven.
• when you take the pieces out of the oven, lay the template over each piece again and use a sharp knife to cut down each piece to the size of the template. Do this whilst they are still warm and slightly soft.
• If you forget the step above, or don’t want to risk squishing the biscuits whilst cutting them down, another option is to wait until the pieces have cooled and ‘sand’ the sides of each using a fine grater. This can be difficult for bigger pieces, such as the roof and walls, as the grater will most likely be a lot smaller than the piece of wall/roof and so the end result won’t be a sharp, straight line.

Tips for decorating and assembly

• Pipe any royal icing decorations on the walls and roof before you even think about assembly, and allow these to set overnight before you start moving the pieces around. This helps prevent damage to the decorations if you accidentally knock or hold a piece of wall/roof/porch in the wrong place when putting it all together.
• Use royal icing sugar to glue the pieces together; you want this to be the consistency of toothpaste.
• Colour the ‘glue’ icing to match the baked gingerbread; this way, excess isn’t too conspicuous.
• Start by assembling the first corner and leave this to set overnight. Pipe a line of the icing along the two edges to be joined, and stick these together by hand at first, then use tins of beans/soup etc. to hold the walls in place. Scrape away any excess icing on the exterior using a knife or the end of a spoon.
• When all of the walls have been assembled in this manner, leave the walls to set overnight before putting the roof on. Remember to put a tealight or string of battery lights (with the battery pack outside of the house!) inside before you proceed to the roof.
• If the template has different sections (e.g. a porch and a main building, or a turret and main building), assemble these separately, allow them to set overnight, then glue them together and leave them to set overnight again. The same applies to chimneys.

Display

When you are ready to display your gingerbread house, consider adding a dusting of icing sugar snowfall to complete the scene. You can also make gingerbread trees, and pipe fencing, to add to the effect. Crumbling up spare gingerbread or other biscuits can make good ‘gravel’ or wood chip to surround the house, whilst trimmed-down Flake bars make a nice log pile. Props that you might have to hand (a small toy London bus, plastic skiing figure or little toy animals such as cats/dogs/deer/foxes etc.) can help bring your build to life. In almost all cases, an LED tealight or string of lights stationed inside the house during construction creates a warming glow from within.

A note on dilapidation

A little bit of disrepair can add charm to the finished design. A wonky or cracked wall, or crumbling archway, can all fit nicely with a theme and relieves any stress associated with striving for perfection in the project. I realised this when I found it much easier (and more fun) to create the crumbling, cracked and damp walls of the ‘haunted house’ compared to the clean, precise exterior of the townhouse. A vigorous climbing plant piped up the walls (and into the roof/chimney/window if necessary) can be a godsend in allowing you to cover any gaps between sections if they don’t line up as you’d hoped. In reality, these issues would give any property owner nightmares, but that’s the whole point really: it is entirely make-believe.