Makes one house: For the Gingerbread • 1kg plain flour • 400g unsalted butter • 330g Muscovado or dark brown sugar • 12 tbsp molasses (golden syrup) • 3 tsp baking soda • 8 tsp ground ginger • 2 tsp cinnamon • 1 tsp ground cloves For the decorations • 2 egg whites • ½ tsp lemon • 500g icing sugar and extra to dust • Generous selection of: o Smarties o Liquorice allsorts (little logs and trees) o Hundreds and thousands (the road) o Coloured silver balls o Colourful hard candy (chimney stack etc..) o Chocolate fingers (logs, door, sides of the house) For the trees and snowman • 4 egg whites • 100g sugar • Hundreds and thousands • Hard candy Other: Cake board to place the house and all the decorations Greaseproof paper
• Cut out the 4 sides of the house in greaseproof paper (you can make a small model out of cardboard to see which shape you might prefer) • Heat the oven to 200 degrees C / gas mark 6. • Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices, then stir in the melted butter mixture and make a stiff dough. Roll into a ball, adding a tsp of cold water if needed. • Place greaseproof paper on your worktop and roll out a quarter of the dough, approx 5mm thick. Cut out one of the sections of the house then slide onto a baking tray (still on the paper). Repeat with the remaining dough, re-rolling the trimmings, until you have all the necessary pieces: Four walls and two roof panels (if you are feeling ambitious you could even make four small chimney pieces…). Any leftover dough can be made into little Christmas trees. • Bake all the sections until firm (approx 12 minutes). Leave to cool to firm up, then trim around the edges to give a crisp look. Leave to cool completely. • Make a smooth icing by blending (in a blender) the icing sugar and the egg-whites (with a few drops of lemon). Spoon in to an icing bag and use it to join the walls together. Prop up the walls on the inside with glasses. Allow to dry for a few hours. Fix the roof panels on in a similar fashion. Allow to dry completely, ideally overnight. • Decorate with your selection of candy, sticking the sweets with the icing. Pipe tiles with icing sugar onto the roof (pattern of your choice). • Whisk the eggwhites until firm and add the sugar towards the end. Pipe into Christmas tree shapes, a snowman etc.. and bake until set at 100 degrees. Stick pieces together with icing sugar. Recipe by Party Organisers Blue Strawberry