Talk to me about gingerbread houses

[iloveholidays]

Keen to try and do one this year so looking for some help...

I've read that Ikea and Lakeland do moulds, is it worth spending the extra on the lakeland one? or get the one from Aldi?

does it need to be gingerbread??? could I just do normal sponge, sorry if stupid question!!!

Buy the Ikea one, it's perfect! I think the kit contains the pieces and instructions for the actual house. You need sugar (for gluing the walls together) icing and things like smarties for decoration

We've done this one quite a few times over the past couple of years - www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4900/simple-gingerbread-house

You just print out the templates and cut around them. The recipe does make quite a lot of extra gingerbread, but we haven't seen that as too much of a problem

I've just bought the Lakeland one, its 4.99 but if you search for 'gingerbread' on the site it said it was out of stock, I found it using the link to all cutters. Weird.

It is really easy to make one from a template you don't need a kit. Dont spend too much time cutting pieces out to begin with, as the gingerbread will spread in the oven and you will need to trim it when it comes out. I normally cut out roughly with a knife about a cm or so bigger than the template and trim to size when cooked.

I suppose you could do a solid sponge house if you wanted but gingerbread is more festival I think.

I've just tried to upload a photo of the one I did last year, I think it was from the sainsburys mag.

Make sure you buy it early - my ikea sold out a few weeks before Xmas. I plan on getting mine as soon as they are out.

Gingerbread houses are made from gingerbread biscuits - like gingerbread men - not sponge - would not turn out the same, and would not keep long..

We did a kit one a couple of years in a row - but won't be bothering again - there is so much edible stuff around at Christmas we threw most of the house out... and it took up too much room.... a bit of a waste...

Be prepared for it to not look like the pictures. Be prepared for swears. It's almost always a 2 person job. I made one last year. Then in the way to deliver it to my mum dropped it down the stairs (live in first floor flat) It had taken three full days. I finally had it looking lovely. I swore a lot then sat on the stairs and cried.

Ooo I made 4 of these last year as gifts- I found the best thing was to buy the houses from Ikea- they do a biscuit kit with all the parts (but no icing) - I think it was only about £2.99...
Then use half a bag of royal icing sugar mixed up with a bit of lemon juice for flavour and glue it all together, then decorate with lots of sweets (I just stocked up from the pound shop).
I put in on a piece if foil covered cardboard- dead simple and it went down really well with everyone.
My only tip is that those kits sell out really quickly at Ikea- so if that is an option, don't leave it too late...
(Apologies to the purists on here doing it from scratch )

I've been a complete cheat and bought the Lakeland one which is all cooked for you and is just an assembly and decorating job. Perfectly suited to my culinary skills and a 3 year olds attention span!

thanks for all your comments. still not sure whether to go for Ikea or lakeland though

I found the bbc food magazine one good too. I have cutters anyway, but the mixture spreads a little as it cooks anyway, so you still need to trim all the shapes while they are still warm. So a tem

plate worked just as well.

The pieces in the ikea one break very easily I found

NorMal sponge would have to be eaten on the day and probably wouldn't hold all the sweeties. I made my first house last year using the Lakeland cutters and the good food recipe. Was easy ( time consuming but nothing was tricky). I found the recipe puffs up quite a bit so my walls were thicker than I would have liked. This year I will roll it a bit thinner than the recipe suggests. We decorated the roof with those white choc buttons with sprinkles on, looked really prett. Best bit was Boxing Day when the dcs and their cousins got to attack it!

I've added some photos to my profile of the gingerbread house I made last year. If you fancy making it from scratch I can message you the recipe and template I used.

For the windows I added crushed boiled sweets before baking, which made a stained glass window effect (nice to put a candle inside for a short time).

I do agree that Ikeas are a bit more fragile than I'd like, but our houses did last until the end of Christmas and didn't go too soft (ikea gingerbread is more like a very crunchy biscuit- quite spicy but very nice!)

I bought the Aldi kit last year which we forgot about so DS did after Christmas..he loved doing it.

I do have a video of him taking a hammer to it as it was so hard

Could I have the recipe paleandinteresting? It looks fab!

I use the good food recipe and a cutter set I got for a bargain in a national trust shop.

Last year I used melted sugar as glue instead of icing - assembled it the night before and then let DD loose with the sweets and the snow icing. I've been doing them for years, and the melted sugar icing is the best I reckon - really clean joins, and sets solid. But obvs not suitable for young children to do as it's boiling hot and you have to work very quickly.

I buy the lidl one very year. It has all the gingerbread made and sweets etc. It costs about a fiver. It never gets eaten, however my nephew and I have done this together for years so we just have an evening with hot choc and sweeties and make it up. It them sits n my kitchen window ledge over the xmas season.

The recipe I use, which is enough for the gingerbread house I make plus some extra for gingerbread men:

300 g butter
500 ml sugar (Scandinavian recipe - they often measure dry ingredients - use an ordinary measuring jug)
100 ml golden syrup
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground cardamom (if you can find it, I've had problems finding it in the UK, if you can't find it just leave it out)
1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
200 ml single cream or milk
900 g flour

Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a saucepan until smooth (don't let it boil)
Mix all the dry and wet ingredients

The dough is best if you can leave it overnight in the fridge

Roll out quite thin (see what shopping said above - you want it to be rigid, if it's too thick then when baked it goes a bit floppy), probably a bit thinner than a pound coin, about 3 mm.

Bake in the oven at 200 degrees celcius for about 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Somewhere I have some rolling pin guides that allow you to roll out to a certain thickness. Something like this:

www.josephjoseph.com/product/view/323

Also, when you glue the gingerbread house together, if you use egg whites rather than water mixed with the icing sugar, it's stronger.

I bought the Ikea one a couple of years ago opened the box and found all the pieces broken. To say this was a disappointment was something of an understatement. So I shall buy more than one box this year.