Homemade gingerbread houses are fun to make at any age.
I am indebted to Elise’s How to Make a Gingerbread House for making my first non-kit and non-graham cracker gingerbread house a success.
Per usual, I swapped whole wheat flour and succanat for the white flour and refined sugars. I also used blackstrap molasses instead of regular molasses.
Another adaptation which turned out to be a lifesaver: using a cardboard six-bottle beer carrier as a structure around which to build the walls and lay the roof. Without this my house would have certainly caved in. It also meant I only had to cut out a cardboard pattern for the roof since for the walls I just placed the carton onto my rolled-out dough and cut around it with a knife.
By the time I finished it was late at night and I didn’t decorate. The next day I elected to keep it the way it was. I like having just the dark brown and bright white.
I constructed it atop a cake platter which worked well. Now it serves as a holiday decoration that I can move as needed.
With leftover dough I made some gingerbread sandwich cookies. Recipe to come!