Here’s our Christmas surprise this year – a homemade gingerbread house!  At some point recently we both realized that we’d never made a gingerbread house from scratch, only from kits or pre-baked parts, so we decided to devote one Sunday afternoon to crafting our own from start to finish.  We were inspired by this recipe in the New York Times, but the beauty of a gingerbread house is that there’s a lot of room for creativity.  We’ll walk you through what we did and what we used to make this masterpiece, but you can also go in your own direction for the decorations and styling.  All you need to keep in mind is that this is a process:  it took us the better part of a day to make the whole thing, so definitely set aside a good chunk of time to make your house.

You’ll need:

• 4 sticks of butter
• Brown sugar
• Flour
• Cinnamon
• Ground ginger
• Baking soda
• Baking powder
• 6 eggs
• Molasses
• 4 lemons
• 2 oranges
• Powdered sugar
• Red Jolly Ranchers
• Green and red gumdrops
• Peppermints
• Red and green M&Ms
• Sno-caps
• Milk chocolate coconut wreaths
• Reese’s peanut butter trees

First, you’ll want to make the dough for your house, which you’ll have to do in two batches:  in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together 2 sticks of butter with 1 1/4 cups of brown sugar for about 5 minutes, until you get a light and creamy mixture.  Then at a low speed add in 2 eggs, one at a time, then a cup of molasses.  In a separate bowl, stir together 6 1/4 cups of flour, 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder, a tablespoon each of cinnamon and ginger, and a pinch of salt.  Add in around a third of this flour mixture to the wet ingredients and turn on the stand mixer at a medium-low speed just to combine everything, then add in another third of the flour mixture and combine, then the remaining third of the flour mixture.  Finally, zest one orange and one lemon and mix that in, and when you’ve got a smooth dough take it out of the bowl, cover in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 4 hours.  Repeat this exact same process over again to make the rest of your dough.

When you’re ready to bake the dough, smush it all together and then divide into five equal pieces.  Cut pieces of parchment paper that are the size of your baking sheets and sprinkle flour on each piece of paper.  Roll each dough piece out into a rectangle that’s just slightly smaller than the baking sheet, and about 1/4-inch thick.  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 350°F, until each piece is set but not burned.

Let the gingerbread fully cool, and now you can start cutting out house pieces.  You can use this template to cut out the front, back, sides, and roof slats of the house – just make sure you also cut a round window into the top of the front piece (we used a shot glass to punch this window out).  Place the template sheets on top of the gingerbread and then start cutting.

To make the window in the front of your house a stained glass window, chop up 3 Jolly Ranchers and place them in a single layer into the hole you cut out.  Place the front piece back on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, then put another piece of parchment paper on top and weigh everything down with a second baking sheet on top of that.  Bake for another 15 minutes at 350°F, then take it out and let your shiny window cool for at least 10 minutes.

Now you can make the frosting to glue all the pieces together:  stir together 4 cups of powdered sugar with 2 eggs whites and the juice from a lemon.  Scoop this into a gallon-sized plastic bag, seal the bag shut, and snip off just the very tip of one corner on the bottom to make your own piping bag.

To start assembling the house, find a sturdy cutting board, squeeze a line of frosting on the bottom edge of your front piece, and press the bottom of this front piece onto the cutting board – make sure you leave enough room so you can fit the entire house on the board.  Hold this piece in place until the frosting dries, then do the same for the sides and back of your house, one piece at a time, using the frosting to glue the pieces to the cutting board and to each other and carefully pressing the pieces together in the right order to build the house.  Use mugs or drinking glasses pressed up against the standing gingerbread pieces to hold the sides of the house together while the frosting dries.  Then glue on the roof pieces as well.

We also decided to make ourselves a chimney by cutting four pieces freehand:  two larger sides and two smaller sides, making triangular notches at the bottom of the larger sides to fit over the top of the house’s roof.  Then we glued all the sides together like this:

Now you can glue the chimney to the top of the house.  You’ll also want to carefully cut out a door on the front, but make sure you don’t lose the door piece!

Wipe up any excess frosting, and now you can decorate your house.  Here’s what we did:  we used the frosting to glue M&Ms to the chimney and the side edges of the house.  We also glued Sno-caps along the edges and bottoms of the roof.  We made hedges along the sides and front of the house by gluing down rows of peppermints, then we made bushes by gluing clumps of green gumdrops in front of the house.  We glued two chocolate coconut wreaths to the front of the house and some Reese’s peanut butter trees on the back of the house.  We lined the roof by gluing on extra gumdrops and peppermints.  Then we wedged the door back into the front of the house and glued a single Sno-cap on it for a doorknob.

And finally, to make shingles on the roof, or if you want to do any other decorating patterns with your frosting, you’ll want to thin the remaining frosting by juicing a second lemon into your bag and squeezing the juice into the frosting until it’s well mixed.  Then carefully pipe the frosting in patterns over the gingerbread.

Ta-da!  Look at that cute gingerbread house – we think we did a good job in using some fun seasonal candies to make a really colorful and festive-looking house.  And it’s all 100% edible, which means you can pick at this gingerbread house for the next couple of weeks until you’ve demolished and eaten the whole thing.  You could probably tell by this long blog post that making a gingerbread house from scratch takes work, so this is not something you can undertake lightly.  But if you’ve got a free day and some patience, this is an interesting Christmas baking project, and it feels good at the end to look on your amazing creation and know that you made this whole thing on your own.