Gingerbread House - Pre Fab and Construction Stage

Ta-da!

This is my first ever gingerbread house and I'm ever so proud!!! I baked the pieces off after work at the beginning of the week and then left them until last night to build into the house.

I baked the pieces at 180C for between 5 and 10 minutes depending on how large the pieces were. The windows were made by sprinkling ground up boiled sweets into the cut out area and baking, I checked for any holes in the windows half way through the cooking time and added more of the ground up sweeties as needed.

To decorate I decided on a chocolate theme - no surprises there I know! I used double chocolate coated finger biscuits to make it into a log cabin and stuck everything together with royal icing. The idea for the roof was firstly to use the new thin Toblerone chocolate triangles to create shingles but I seriously under estimated how far 2 boxes would go and only got one half of the roof covered with them. So then I opted to use the royal icing like snow, and if you look really carefully, you can see wee snowflakes nestling on the roof too. And mini Rolo's completed the ridge of the roof.

Royal Icing

2 egg whites

500g icing sugar

Whisk egg whites until stiff peak stage. Add icing sugar and continue whisking until smooth and thick.

Makes enough for 1 gingerbread house (and then some!)

Jamie Oliver Magazine - Dec 09/Jan 10

I printed out the template for the gingerbread house from Delicious. But now it is made I don't think I'll have the heart to let anyone eat it now lol