We just had our 21st annual gingerbread house decorating party. Some people bring the kits you can buy for around $10 and those work great. It’s amazing how different the houses turn out with each person’s individual decorating ideas. But some of us like to build houses from scratch. And they’re not always actually houses. This year we had a crashed pirate ship made from gingerbread. This gingerbread is for a gingerbread house, not to eat! It doesn’t taste all that good but it’s very sturdy.
My friend Helen hosted our first gingerbread house day and a few years after that first party, she gave us book called Gingerbread for all Seasons. This dough recipe came from that book. We’ve tried different recipes over the years but we keep coming back to this one. You want to make this at least an hour before you want to roll out the dough. You can also make it ahead of time and refrigerate, then bring to back to room temperature before rolling out.
Gingerbread House Dough
Ingredients
- 6 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups light corn syrup
- 1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
- 1 cup butter
Instructions
- Stir together the flour, cinnamon, ginger and salt. If you have a KitchenAid stand mixer, you can mix this up in that bowl.
- In a small saucepan, combine the corn syrup, sugar and butter. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the butter is melted and everything is blended.
- Pour the warm mixture into the flour mixture and mix until blended. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can mix this by hand.
- Refrigerate the dough about an hour to cool it off.
- Roll the dough out on parchment paper to a thickness of 1/8″.
- Cut your pieces and bake 12-15 minutes at 350F.
- Check for air bubbles while baking and poke them with a sharp knife or fork so the pieces stay flat.
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