Recipe and Pattern for Victorian Gingerbread House by David and Diane Calabro (making gingerbread houses for 20 years)

VICTORIAN GINGERBREAD HOUSE
(Recipe Below)

The house is being assembled. Chocolate icing works really well for this part. Notice that the windows are made of melted candy. Toothpicks hold the structure together. Always let the gingerbread house sit overnight before you put the rest of the white/decorative icing and the candy. Otherwise there is so much extra weight from the candy that the whole house will just come apart. So this really is a two day project. (Actually I do it in 3 days - the first day I make the dough and put that in the refrigerator. The second day I cut and bake the pieces, let them cool down completely, and then assemble the house. The third day is the most fun because that is the decorating and putting candy on the house). You likely can't see this but the inside of the house has candy tiled floors. Why not!

The house is finished and candy covers it. The white frosting and all the colors really dress up the gingerbread house!

This is a photo of the back of the house. If you look carefully at the front photo above and this photo you can figure out how the pattern pieces come together. Making a gingerbread house is a lot of fun. The first time you do this - especially a pattern as complicated as this one - it may be a bit lopsided or perhaps not turn out exactly like you planned. But just go with it and have fun.

PHOTOS FROM The Church of the Epiphany
GINGERBREAD HOUSE WORKSHOP
November 15, 2003
by David Calabro (recipe and pattern below)

Just baked and assembled with chocolate frosting.

Decorating kids!

Dave and Sarah show off the Gingerbread House

GINGERBREAD HOUSE RECIPE

Years ago, there was a TV show on WGBH called "ZOOM" and one day they did a segment on making Stained Glass Cookies. At that time, I was in high school (I said it was a million years ago) and I was making Gingerbread Houses to sell at holiday time as a little side business. And I looked at those Stained Glass Cookies and I thought, hmmmm.... That's when I started to make stained glass windows in my Gingerbread Houses. Very cool! There is a Gingerbread House book at the library (wish I could remember the name) and I remember getting the template for "Grandma's House" out of this book. Cheshire Library has the book.

GINGERBREAD RECIPE TO MAKE A GINGERBREAD HOUSE

The Recipe for the Gingerbread House

1/2 cup of butter or vegetable shortening
1 cup of brown sugar
3 eggs
1 cup of molasses
2 tablespoons of ginger
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 tablespoon of baking soda
5 1/2 cups of flour (and maybe a bit more)

Cream shortening and sugar together until it is like peanut butter. Add the eggs and molasses (if you coat the inside of your measuring cup with a little vegetable oil, you can measure the molasses much easier). Mix well. Add all the dry ingredients. Mix well. You are probably using your hands to mix at this point. I know I do (and if you rub a bit of the shortening on your hands first you will be so much happier because the dough won't be quite so sticky). Chill for three hours.

You need to make a base, four house sides, and two roof pieces. you will need to sketch out a house - just like making a log cabin kind of arrangement. You can make a pattern out of cardboard and then cut the dough along these lines. With the dough that's left over, you are going to make a base which looks really like a big pizza pie rolled out on a big cookie sheet.

Tips:

Always line your cookie trays with foil - easier to get the cookie pieces out and they won't break on you.

THE ICING

For icing I use confectionary sugar, shortening and water.
Figure about 4 pounds of confectionary sugar, 1 cup of white Crisco, and enough water to make this a nice frosting consistency.

I'll add hot chocolate mix or cocoa powder for the chocolate icing.
That's it.

If you are going to eat this great creation immediately then by all means use the best ingredients you can. If you are planning on having this as a table top display for a few weeks, really don't eat this. It will be hard as a rock and very stale. Not to mention that the icing will be rancid, etc. etc. And use cheaper ingredients. And use twice as much spice as the gingerbread smell is really whatt you are going for here.

This is the pattern from the book (sorry - can't recall the name but there are so many good books now with great gingerbread house recipes and patterns). There are a lot of tiny pieces - the finials and the gables and so on. Make them if you want. Every once in a while I will do all these little doodads but it takes a lot of time and patience. For the gingerbread house at the top of the page I squared off the windows. I think I like that even better than the oval tops.