On the 19th December my lovely children (and me) made a gingerbread house

Following Mary Berry's recipe for gingerbread which (borrowed from the bbc website which is):

• 375g unsalted butter
• 300g dark muscovado sugar
• 150g golden syrup
• 900g plain flour
• 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbsp ground ginger

 

 

We melted the butter, sugar and syrup together in a pan. Then we put the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger together into a large bowl and made a well in the centre. We poured in the melted butter mixture, stirred it in and, when cool enough to handle, kneaded it into a stiff dough. 

We then put it in our Lakeland silicon mould and baked it for 10-12 minutes at 180oc.

Then we left it cool and made royal icing (we used 1 packed of powered egg white whisked with 3 tablespoons warm water and when mixed in we added another 7 and whisked again). Then we added about 500g sugar (I added until it was stiff) and then I added a squeeze of lemon juice).

We then used it to over a cake board and to join the 4 sides and the roof (I always hate this and find as soon as my back it turned a side has collapsed or a roof half slid off) - we left it to dry over night.

Then it was decorated by the girls. Chocolate buttons for roof tiles, mini marshmallows, smarties and jelly tots to cover joins and the tree and licorice allsorts to be a path.  All stuck on with the icing