Gingerbread House

A candy-cane gingerbread house good enough to eat

The town in which we lived in the Middle East was created by early oil-exploring Americans in the 1940s and remains persistently Americanized despite the increasing number (percentage-wise) of expatriates who arrive there from all over the world. To this day, the school on camp is an American international school, and since so many of the basic structures and community organisations begun by the early oil arrivals to the country in the 1940s, (think T-ball, baseball, swimming league ...) are very American, there is a very strong cultural identity that is an underpinning of life there, despite, or maybe because of, the vibrant multi-culturalism of the community. Even after a school year in South Africa, our eldest son, for instance still has a noticeable little American accent, now harder to define since the intonations given to various vowel sounds, particularly the a and i have become more South Africanized. But when all of his formal learning was undertaken by people with American accents, it stood to reason he would pick one up.

As Faran’s accent indicates, you are never immune (thankfully so!) to the influences of other cultures, and, in particular, I love the wonderful, slightly over-the-top celebration that constitutes an American Christmas and which brings back extremely fond memories of the year I spent in Chicago as a Rotary Exchange Student. Come the winter holiday season, gingerbread houses reign supreme for Americans, thanks to a strong German influence on the original settlers. 

I think the one that tickled my fancy the most was in a house showcased on our annual House Tour, where we were privileged to be allowed into the beautiful homes stylish people make for themselves when they have leisure and money on their hands and, thanks to the inclement weather, are forced inside a lot. An American with Germanic roots and his originally Mexican wife, in a house flooded with the colours of Mexico - wonderful light yellow and ochre and orange walls, with bright, high ceilings and an amazing Tex-Mex succulent garden in the front - sat there in the kitchen, carefully cobbling together a very traditional gingerbread house with candy canes and snow, snow and more snow ... It made for a delightful contrast – this terribly elaborate, bordering on the twee (by which I mean excessively dainty and delicate), gingerbread house being assembled within a larger house that was anything but. That year, we also had on show a house filled to the brim with Santa Clauses, collected by a Mormon friend, and until then, had never associated Mormonism with our grey-bearded and rotund Seasonal Visitor. Our time in that world was certainly interesting as it was peopled with a fascinating diversity. 

Over the years, of course, we went from admiring the houses to becoming more and more desirous of wanting to make one ourselves. I borrowed the template for the house, together with its accompanying recipe from Cynthia, a Canadian friend and master cook. 

I must admit I had no feeling whatsoever for gingerbread houses, having never made one before, and I found the instructions somewhat lacking. In particular, the recommendation to hardly bake it and then let the baked pieces just sit for 4 days in the open air before beginning assembly I found very peculiar, but indeed as it got staler and drier, it became harder. I had to take Cynthia’s word for this, but was most dubious for the first few days, prodding them with what I know would have been my Scottish grandmother’s slightly contemptuous expression on my face, lips curled in distrust.

Anyhow, we made our first house:

This is it's best side - it sports an inordinate amount of entirely preventable snow 

Please do as I didn’t and do undertake the decorating of the gingerbread house-sides with other soft gingerbread bits (cutting out the windows and making little decorations around the doorways, up to and including small trees against the side walls) on the sides before you bake them. Also, once it has baked, please tidy up the sides carefully with a serrated knife before assembly (not a straight one, cut it as you would bread, lots of sawing motions, lest the pressure you exert breaks the thin, fragile pieces in half). No matter how straight you cut the pieces pre-baking, you will get little protrusions and slightly wonky sides, and if you assemble as is, you’ll get gaps in the house which can only be plugged with hard and unpalatable "snow". Furthermore: 

Do put the candy canes and icing on when pieces are flat and wait for them to dry

We did none of the above, first time around. Believe you me, it was one of those times when I banged myself on my head afterwards and went - oh silly me. But never under-estimate how much your feel for anything comes from imitating others, and if you have no-one to follow, you make more mistakes than otherwise, which is why I always try and put so many pictures on my Foodies Channel blog. So our first house was cobbled together with a lot more snow than normal, but the kids were very happy and that is all that counts. However, we now have a Christmas tradition on our family hands ...

That year I copied down the recipe but gave back the template, with the idea that, since I made pottery houses for years it’s not too difficult to design one’s own and that is what we did the next year. I had trouble sourcing candy canes in Africa, and so got a set imported via Alyson (thank you very much), but since the canes were of the large kind, was obliged to design the house around the size of the canes.

Our second gingerbread house based on large candy canes

However, given the expected humidity of a KwaZulu-Natal summer, I did have to treat the gingerbread pieces as I would a rusk (or twice-baked bread) and dry them out in the oven at 100 C (gas mark ¼ or 225 F). If you take this option, you can assemble the gingerbread house the next day, however, if it is humid, you may want to make that day Xmas Eve. 

For a basic template, you can always download a file here: Gingerbread House Heaven and a great set of instructions by Susan Reid for assembling the houses can be found at: Building the House. 

Gingerbread House Recipe

115 g butter, softened (½ cup)

100 g brown sugar (½ cup)

175 g molasses (½ cup)

440 g flour (3 ½ cups)

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger powder

 ½ teaspoon salt

⅓ cup water 

Pre-heat oven to  190 °C  (375 °F), gas mark 5.

*for a more “German” tasting house – I add a teaspoon or so of mixed spice and I always tend to put in more spice than the recipe calls for. Why not? 

With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar thoroughly, then beat in molasses. Mix all dry ingredients. Alternately, add first some of the dry ingredients, then water to the mixture and continue until all are fully incorporated. If the dough becomes stiff, take out and mix by hand until smooth. Knead thoroughly. (Lightly dust hands with flour). As with any dough, it is best left to ‘rest’ for twenty minutes or so after mixing it – preferably in the refrigerator. If the dough has been refrigerated for a long time, such as overnight, remove at least three hours prior to use to ensure it is room temperature when baking. 

Roll out into thin enough sections. The template I originally borrowed said that the thickness for the rolled out dough should be ³/₈ inch or 1 cm thick. However, if you are making a very large house, then they advocate the dough should be about ¼ inch or about 1.3 cm thick (the translation from inches to centimetres at this level is not very satisfactory), and for smaller houses about ¹/₈ inch or ½ cm thick. Do bear in mind the size of your baking sheet when designing the house since you can’t make it larger than that, and it does expand slightly thanks to the bicarbonate of soda. Also, try to ensure the dough is evenly rolled out, the lumps and bumps do come back to haunt you.

Bake at 375 °F (190 °C) for 8-10 minutes. It will be pretty soft when you take it out and if you are like me you will panic for a while, and phone Cynthia, and even after her assurance it is how it should be, still be concerned – and then shout at your husband when you discover him putting the pieces into a tin, thinking to help - and then argue vociferously with him over how gingerbread houses should be made, having suddenly become an expert in the matter. However, it does dry out in the open air in northern climes– and do instruct all and sundry in the household before-hand not to place it in containers or put anything on top of the pieces you have carefully placed on top of the fridge and do make especially sure the children know not to eat the pieces on pain of – well, pain (death seems a wee tad extreme in this instance). 

Do assume not all the candy canes and candies will make it onto the house

For those in the northern hemisphere, dough should be baked 4 – 5 days before house assembly since it needs to dry out. Unfortunately, for us southern hemisphere lovers, I did anticipate that the humidity and heat of a KwaZulu-Natal summer would give give trouble in the above regard, but in the immortal words of Amichand Rajbansi of KwaZulu-Natal, one-time Chief Minister of the House of Delegates of the justly discredited Tricameral Parliament in the last peculiar decade of apartheid, I decided that “I’ll double-cross that bridge when I come to it.” A solution was found by treating the cooked dough as if it were a rusk, and drying it out in the oven at 100 °C (212 °F), gas mark ¼.

You will need to make a template of a house and cut your shapes out before baking. For a large house (such as the one we made), you would make about 3 of the above such mixtures. 

The unsung hero of the house is the Royal Icing with which it is cobbled together, without which you will not get far, particularly with slightly wonky bits and gaps. It dries hard as concrete, so this isn't really an option you want. 

The Americans and Canadians always used all kinds of sweets or candies on the house, especially the candy canes – the smaller the better. Some templates even have space specifically for the tiny candy canes. There are all kinds of frosted cereals that are traditionally used, for instance, for roof tiles, that are unfortunately not necessarily available elsewhere. So do go on a shopping expedition for sweets and so on before you begin to bake the house, remember you can also use the gingerbread to make little people and trees and so on and for the rest - let imagination be your guide - 

Happy House Building!