Building Gingerbread

My mom & I make approximately 40 gingerbread houses each year, so I know what I am saying when I tell you this is a great recipe. We lost our recipe this year so tried this one and we like it better than our usual one. You will have to correctly measure the flour or it would be too dry. You scoop the flour into the measure cup and with a kitchen scoop, then clear off the top with a knife WITHOUT tapping the cup. Then it should not be too dry. Also don't try to make them too thin. They should be app. 3/8" thick. Good luck with your gingerbread house!

To all those who have tried this recipe and ended up with a crumbly mess (like me!) I have some valuable advice. Once you've melted the shortening, keep the heat on medium as you add the rest of the ingredients GRADUALLY using a whisk to mix it in, rather than dumping all the dry ingredients in all at once. Keeping it over the heat helped keep it warm and pliable. It's amazing how much of a difference this all made. It turned out PERFECTLY and I will be sure to use this recipe every year!

This recipe goes against all "rules" of typical rolled cookies. This dough needs to be *hot* to be workable, and I wouldn't use any flour at all while rolling - the shortening keeps the dough from sticking to anything, and extra flour just makes a goo out of the oil. I microwaved the dough for about 10-20 seconds between each rolling, and the results seem fine and strong. The flour-to-liquid ratio is critical in this recipe. I was very light-handed with the flour, and it turned out fine. You might want to sift the flour first, or spoon it very lightly into the measuring cup. I also doubled the spices and added 2 t. cinnamon and 1 t. allspice for extra flavor. I was able to make 2 6-inch square roof pieces, 2 5x5-inch side walls, and 2 front/back pieces extending up to 7 inches tall - and I still had plenty of leftover dough for trees, a chimney, etc.

Lost my old recipe and had to try several until I found this one-it is really good. This makes a good stiff dough that yeilds a sturdy non-puffy cookie that works very well for building houses or making large cookies for hanging. NOTE: Flour must be measured very carefully and then should not be dumped into the fluids all at once. Flour varies in moisture content- the amount needed in any cookie recipe may vary somewhat from time to time even if it is same brand brand of flour. Don't pack the flour into the cup- spoon it into the cup then level the top off with a knife. This makes a very stiff dough, but that is what is needed for house building. Use a different recipe for cookies to be used for eating only.

If you are looking for a strong firm gingerbread that will not spread or warp this is it. BUT, having said that, you need to realize that this is not your typical cookie dough recipe. This is a HOT cookie dough and if you let it cool down you will have a crumbly mess. I followed other reviews and added the hot mixture to the dry (minus one cup of flour for my double batch) and mixed until combined. To roll out the dough I covered my cookie sheet with parchment and microwaved a large handful of dough for 25-40 seconds until it was very warm and soft. Working quickly I rolled the dough out on my prepared cookie sheet cut out my pattern and removed the (by now) crumbling dough extras. My pieces took between 15-18 min. to bake but I was making large walls mostly. Once I removed them from the oven I quickly put my pattern back on the cooked pieces and trimed the edges to ensure that my building's edges were straight. This recipe was VERY different from anything I have worked with before but the results were just what I was looking for. This is not a recipe for beginning cooks but if you are up for a challenge give it a try. Just remember it needs to be warm!!!!!

This recipe is great, but to make it easier for the beginner to work with, I'd suggest taking the yolks from the eggs --you're using 2 whites for the frosting - and add them to the dough mixture. Any good baker knows not to pack flour either, the only ingredient you usually ever pack is brown sugar, so be sure to measure flour by sifting or spooning and level it carefully with the blade of a knife and you'll have a terrific house. The icing works great even heavy things like ribbon candy can be 'glued on' with it. This was a fun little house to build.

I gave it 4 stars because I tweeked the recipe to make it a 5 star! What I did different: I used 4 3/4 cups of flour instead of 5. And I added a little bit of cinnamon and cloves to make it smell yummy. I put all the dry ingredients into my mixer bowl then proceeded to make the shortening, molasses, sugar mix. After I melted the shortening on the stove and mixed in the sugar and molasses, I added it to my mixer bowl (that already held the flour mixture in it.) mixed throroughly for about 1 minute. I formed it into a big ball, then I put it all into a gallon sized ziploc bag. From there, I took 1/3 of the dough out of the ziploc and rolled it out onto parchment paper, did the cutouts and removed the excess(instead of the cutouts). Slid the parchment onto a cookie sheet and baked in the oven for 5-7 minutes. If the dough in the ziploc hardened, I popped it into the microwave for 20 - 30 seconds. The dough was warm to work with but easier. I didn't use any flour when rolling the dough out. It is fairly greasy dough if you warm it in the microwave. Just work quick and if it gets hard, put in micro. The pieces of my house turned out nice and hard. Perfect to build with!!! Good luck.

Thanks, this was a perfect recipe for a beautiful gingerbread house......it was easily doubled or quadrupled to give very creative house designs. The icing was great.....very strong...once again I recommened this recipe highly.

The icing was fantastic, but the gingerbread wasn't. I rolled it thicker than suggested, and it burned on the edges after 8 minutes.

This was my first attempt at building a gingerbread house and this recipe worked really well. I used the Royal Icing II for the glue, made an outside chimney with tiny M&M's on it for "stones", and small tootsie rolls beside the front door for "firewood". I was able to cut out a window from the back side of the house but left a cutout of a gingerbread person waving through the window! It was really great.

This is a great recipe that doesn't puff too much for houses. As other reviewers have noted, it is a bit crumbly so I sprinkled warm water on the dough, mixed it in by hand when necessary and it was perfectly workable. Thanks for the great recipe!

This was my first attempt at making a Gingerbread house. This is an excellent, easy recipe. Thanks to Doris C for the advice. It was helpful and made the dough perfect. This will defintely become a family tradition.(Even my husband had fun helping!!!)

This recipe is fantastic. I usually use a different recipe to make my gingerbread house, but decided to change it up this year as I've never been thrilled with the other one. I was a little skeptical at first, but I decided to give it a go. I did as others suggested and VERY carefully measured the flour and added it into the pan slowly using a spatula. I wasn't sure from the recipe instructions when to turn off the heat so I waited until I had some of the flour in the pan and mixed in then took the pan off the heat and stirred in the remaining flour. The dough was warm, but not too hot when I went to roll it out. I used my stenciles (cut out form a cereal box) to measure the dough on parchment paper and left it directly on the pan (it's difficult to move the large pieces from a rolling board) then when they came out of the oven, I immediately put the stencil on the still warm dough and used a pizza cutter to cut along the edges that were not straight and uniform any longer, this worked great to give me uniform sides and roof pieces that baked up perfectly flat (unlike my other recipe that would bubble and give a wobbly looking house). I love this icing/cement recipe too, I only made half and put it into my mechanical icing piper and it is still not cement hard! Makes it perfect for sticking pieces onto the house and decorating!! thanks!

This was so much fun to make and snack on!

I worked with this recipe for about two hours last night only to run out of dough at the end. I was only making one house but there's not enough for the roof. The dough got crumbly fast so I also did the microwave thing. We all have the day off from school today (snow day in Maine!) so my son's and I will try to put the finished parts together (sans roof) and see what happens!! Thanks for the recipe. I'll try again next year. Merry Christmas! :-)

I made a double batch. I had to add one extra cup of shortening, then 3 eggs to get a consistency I could roll and form. Even with the additional ingredients I had a had time getting the shapes to not crack. The icing was superb and held together very well.

My daughter and I made 7 gingerbread houses from this recipe this year (we made several batches of dough ...) and we are very pleased with how they turned out. We discovered that using margarine produced a smooth finish, but when we mixed butter and margarine together in one batch the dough was a little bizarre and was full of cracks as we worked with it. We still went ahead and baked it, and the resulting house had sort of a "stone" texture, which actually turned out to be a very interesting finish. Overall this is an excellent recipe and we have 7 beautiful gingerbread houses on display this year as proof :)

Easy & fabulous building material. Not terribly tasty though. Did have to microwave briefly to get it to stick together before rolling it out. Used Wilton's meringue powder to make edible royal icing so the kids can eat their creations if they want.

This was a great recipe. It was my first attempt at making a gingerbread. A word of advice, I cut the flour by about 1/4 cup, and before each side was rolled, I microwaved the dough for a few seconds to keep it warm and pliable. (It crumbled when I didn't do this)The frosting is great. We were able to "glue" the house and have it set within 20 minutes. I'll definitely do this again next year. Thanks!

sorry to give the mid-star rating... it's probably more something I did wrong. it just didn't really turn out like it should have.

Just fantastic and so pretty and cute!!!!! LOVE it.

Super fun and delish!!

I think the ingredients and instruction are fine but for first-timers like myself, it could use some measurements (blue prints) and maybe a photo or illustration.

I had success building this gingerbread house but did have to start over because I didn't roll out the dough soon enough and it got to be too stiff. But it was fun to decorate and fairly easy to cut out using the gingerbread diagram on allrecipes.

I haven't done the icing, and I don't know if I will yet. So this is just the gingerbread. I love the recipe but I had to make a few changes. I don't bake much but my mom always told me that I could use veg oil instead shortening and I couldn't understand why I would melt the shortening when I can have veg oil. Also, this way I could use my stand mixer. ;) I also don't care for molasses much lass cook with it. So I used a dark corn syrup and I must say, it tastes great and still has that nice golden colour. I still had to warm it up in the micro like others suggested but a small price to pay to use the mixer. lol

I followed the recipe exactly and while it cooks into Gingerbread good for building houses, I found it to be a bit too dry and crumbly and hard to kneed all the ingredients together. The overall flavor was a little bland. I think I'd add a lot more spice.

This recipe did not fully explain how to make the actual product. Instead of it turning out like ginger bread it looked more like dirt. It was very difficult to work with and inless if the directions were revised I personally wouldn't reccomend it to anyone.

This recipe turned out really dry and crumbly at first. I had to add two small eggs and a couple of tablespoons of milk to make it hold together.

The dough comes out very crumbly, it comes out to the consistency of pie crust, only slightly more crumbly still. I read the reviews and they were very helpful, thanks everyone! This was my first house and it came out good. I used a combination of heating in the microwave and sprinkling water on it and with that i was able to get the shapes cut. Also the recipe says it yeilds 1 house, i think maybe that should have been more specific, i had to make two batches to make the house. And these are also very strong on the molasses (they taste like molasses cookies) but they taste good. All in all good recipe is great but hard for the beginner

While this recipe had great flavor, it was not conducive to building houses. The gingerbread was waaaay too soft and out of the four batches I made I was barely able to piece together two houses. I won't be making this one to build with again!

This gingerbread is great for building! It's the firmest recipe I've found so far. It was really dry, probably because I let the molasses cool a little before adding the dry ingredients, but after warming up the crumbly dough in the microwave and added a splash of water, I was able to roll it back together for the most part.

This recipe is awful. I am a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, therefore I have many years of cooking expertise. This recipe is too crumbly and will not stick together. My students were very heartbroken that they could not get this recipe to work.

i didn't change a thing in this recipe and it was wonderful! i rolled my dough out on parchment paper and cut out the shapes while on the paper. then i just slid it over onto the cookie sheet and baked it! very easy! i also kept the dough in the pot that i melted my shortening in so it stayed warm and pliable. just keep it on the lowest setting so the dough doesn't start to cook. i also took some jolly ranchers and hammered them a bit and added them to the windows of my house (which i cut out before baking) and i added them to the window holes during the last 5 minutes of baking. that made stained glass windows. i put a night light inside of my gingerbread house and it looks so cute when lit. great recipe! i will use it every single year.

I am not fond of eating gingerbread, but this is very yummy. I does'nt puff up and go out of shape like other recipes.

This was my second gingerbread house attempt. I ended up adding an extra cup of shortening to it to try to fix the crumbly mess I got, and I was only able to make wall-shapes after re-melting the crumbles (and burning it) on the stovetop. However, the walls certainly were hard and stable, especially after re-burning them in the oven. It doesn't really matter what they looked like or tasted like, though, because if you cover it up with enough icing and candy no one can tell anyway.

alot of fun if you have the time

The dough came out a bit crumbly, but I just pressed it into my mold and it baked out wonderful. Thanks!!

This was the first time i've ever made a gingerbread house... i found that while the dough was still warm it was easy to work with..as it cooled down i had to add water because it got crumbly..i thought it was a great recipe..the frosting was also excellent glue! i will definately use them both again.

My first time doing a gingerbread house and working with gingerbread dough. I worked the dough in between plastic wrap and it made it so much more workable. It was perfect as well as the frosting.

I thought I had made a mistake on this recipe it turned out so bad. I could not get it to hold together without adding water, and when baked it looked all lumpy. Get another recipe, or you'll never want to make another gingerbread house.

nice mild gingery taste, you can build anything with it- the perfect edible Christmas decoration!

yum great recipe, but add the mix slowly and stop when you can't stir it. i made 2 little houses (not sure if good or bad)

Flavor is good, but just too hard to work with. The first roll out when it was nice and warm went fine, but after that it was a crumbly mess and I even reheated it and sprayed with water and it still was a pain. I was going to make some extra cookies with the leftovers, but I will go back to the recipe I used the year before next time.

I tried this recpe and the dough became crumbly. I don't know what happened, I went by the directions and I ended up throwing it away.

This is a great recipe. I read the reviews and was a little apprehensive, but started anyway. I don't see how anyone can mess this recipe up. Yes, it is really stiff dough, but if you work it while it's hot there's no problem. I heated up the shortening, sugar and molasses mixture until I started to get bubbles, then turned it off and added the dry mixture reallllllllyyyyy slowly. Just a little bit at a time. I turned out the whole mixture onto parchment and kneaded just to get all of the flour in really good. I rolled it out on parchment, and transferred to a cookie sheet to bake. I didn't need to add flour to roll it, didn't stick to my marble rolling pin. I baked whole sheets then cut out windows with my dremel tool. The gingerbread was rock hard when it cooled. Timing was slightly longer because I baked whole sheets, about 20 minutes. All in all, really easy and tastes okay. If you want to eat gingerbread I would use a different recipe. Also, added salt to the first batch, but it made it way too salty, left it out the rest of the batches. I will definitely use this recipe again. Ingredients were cheap and quick to make.

Crumble, Crumble, Crumble mess. I had to microwave dough and add corn syrup to smooth it out enough to work with. I don't know how the recipe found its way into the book but, hats off to those who can pull this one off.

I never made a gingerbread house before and wanted to try it. Molasses can be difficult to find in Qatar, so I used dark karo syrup and brown sugar. True the recipe was crumbly but did work when it was warmed in the microwave. Used templates and cut the dough with a pizza cutter. Gingerbread dough baked in the time provided and were cooled overnight. Instead of using Royal Icing to put the house together I used heated sugar syrup - 4 cups of sugar plus pasturized egg whites. The glue was great and assembly went quickly. I decorated the house with candy common to Qatar. Really enjoyed the experience of making a ginger bread house. The dough did not spread that much and the walls and roof were sturdy.

I should have read the reviews prior to starting. As with most people, this came out very crumbly, we added another 1/4 C. oil to mix. It was very hard to work so we rolled it out directly on the greased cookie sheet and cut pieces to size, left the pieces on the cookie sheet removed the excess and baked the peices. The end result was a great looking house, just a little hard to work the dough.

First review... I was so scared to make this recipe! Never baked a gingerbread house before but had always wanted to... my daughter needed to bake one for her German class and she found this recipe. So we took the plunge today and so far so good! Followed all instructions. Made two batches because I don't always have good luck with doubling recipes... two batches later we have a house ready for a roof! Thanks for the recipe!

I noted that several reviews stated it was too dry and crumbly and others stated it was fine. I decided to try it the first time exactly as written and yes, my dough did turn out crumbly, but kneading it in smaller amounts needed to fill each section of my mold worked fine. I was using a silicone mold rather than rolling and cutting pieces. I think I would have had trouble trying to roll out the dough. I'll probably try reducing the flour just a bit next time. I needed to bake closer to 20 minutes, perhaps my molds were a little thicker than the intended thickness. The resulting gingerbread pieces turned out beautiful and sturdy. For the icing, I found that I needed closer to 3.5 cups of sugar to get a good thick consistency. I was going for about the consistency of toothpaste. The icing worked great to hold everything together and our house turned out beautiful. If you happen to be using the Juvale gingerbread house mold sold on Amazon, you'll get the house and just a couple of the extras out of this recipe. The next time, I'm going to make 1.5 times the dough and the icing so that I can make all the extras.

The only issue I had with the recipe is my own issue of having overly sensitive hands! It was a bit too warm and if it cooled anymore then I let it, it became crumbly. I had to get husband to help HA HA! OTHERWISE, this is a really great recipe and in fact just what I was looking for to build my boys a Gingerbread house! It holds its shape really well, I however would not reccomend eating it!

this was more the consistancy of graham cracker powder by the time it finished mixing, it did not hold up well at all, it was nearly impossible to roll out and to get the shapes measured out right, i would not recomend this recipe to a beginning baker at all

Everything didn't work except the icing.

Awesome. First time making a gingerbread house and the dough tastes awesome, holds up well and was really easy to make. I did change dark corn syrup to molasses because that was what I had. I also used the royal frosting to stick the large pieces together, but for trim and decorations made a very stiff buttercream because I like the taste better.

I found the same problems as many others when it came to a crumbly mess. I improvised by adding a couple eggs and some water to make it a little easier to deal with. That seemed to do the trick.

This is a great recipe for building a gingerbread house, but not great for eating. The dough cooks to be very hard and barely rises, so you get a flat surface.. which is great for building with but is crunchy and hard as sheet rock when bitten into. If you want to trim the pieces to have flat square edges- do this right out of the oven! I waited too long and the cookie got too hard to trim up the pieces easily. Definitely add the flour slowly.. you might not need all of it. I didn't use about a 1/3 cup. I also tried microwaving the dough to keep it soft between roll outs- this works really well. Would recommend rolling the dough out almost twice as thick as what's recommended to get a slightly softer more edible result.

This is my second year using this recipe. It's unusual because it's a warm dough, but it's really easy to work with, and produces wonderful stiff and strong gingerbread. My recommendations: follow the recipe closely, add dry ingredients gradually, keep the mix over low heat. Also, bake larger pieces together, and smaller pieces together, because baking times are important. By the time the larger pieces bake, the smaller ones will be burned. The dough really keeps its shape, so you can make lots of little shapes to embellish your gingerbread creation. The icing is great, too. Invest in a plastic squeeze bottle, it makes such a difference in how well you can apply it. Also, I use a few pins to hold the walls of a gingerbread house together while the icing is hardening. update: I've been making this dough for maybe 6 years now? It's my go-to gingerbread house dough. Now I just hot-glue the house pieces together to start, because I simply don't have the patience to hold the house together! I still use the icing to attach embellishments.

This was such a crumbling mess. I tried reheating it on the stove, but ended up throwing it all out.

I spent a long time debating between numerous gingerbread house recipes and decided to try this one first. It worked perfectly! I didn't change a thing. I did follow the advice to measure the flour correctly, spooning it into the measuring cup and I sifted the dry ingredients (except the suger) together. I melted the shortening in a microwave safe bowl instead of melting it over the stove as I didn't want to scratch any of my pots when I mixed the dough together. I also rolled the dough out in between two pieces of parchment paper and did not use any flour. It was perfect. Thanks for this great recipe!

awesome recipe!

I am very disaointed with this recipe, it wasted a lot of my time and energy. I will definatly be looking for a new one.

Extremely difficult dough to work with and I am an experienced baker. Very crumbly and ended up wasting half the batch because only able to get an initial rolling out of the dough.

Worked out well. Very tasty yet crunchy. But for it's purpose, very sturdy. Good frosting too. I made sure it got more stiff by adding more powdered sugar because it held better.

Gingerbread was structurally fine but not much of a taster. I have used other recipes and had both before. Frosting cement was good.

This is a great recipe. I do add extra spices for the flavor. As long as you don't let the dough cool it is really easy to work with. If it does cool just put what you need to work with in the microwave and heat it up. After the dough is done I usually throw a lid on the pot to help keep it warm a little longer. I roll it out between 2 sheets of parchment to make it easier, and its less stressful transferring your cut pieces to the cookie sheet when it is already on the parchment. I don't use the icing recipe, not a fan of royal icing. I use tempered white chocolate as the "glue"

I did not make any changes to the recipe. It was crumbly. I made some cutouts and then by the time I went to use the scrapes, it was extremely crumbly and I wasn't able to use them.

Great recipe! Everyone raved about the taste of the gingerbread and the frosting.

I took the advice of other reviewers and microwaved chunks of dough before rolling them out. Worked great! A double batch made four good-sized houses, we had a lot of fun designing and decorating.

I couldn’t roll it out fast enough to not have a crumbly mess. Had a lot of dough left over that I could not salvage. Will not use this recipe again.

I just made this and it turned out awesome! Read through all the reviews and tips first, which was extremely helpful. I have not attempted a Gingerbread house since the Big Fail of 1999. Living in Florida, some things just don't turn out the same as they did when I baked while living at higher altitudes, but this one was spot on. Not really for eating but who cares? We bake to decorate!

This is my first time making a completely homemade gingerbread house. I LOVE this recipe. With some of the comments I was nervous about trying it but this was simple and so fun! I made it exactly as directed and it was perfect! Thanks for the recipe!!

It works well, but the dough is very dry, so tends to crack, is difficult with large pieces. Add an extra T of molasses.

Works well - have to work fast though, while the dough is hot!

I loved the methodology. I think I'll try some additional spices next time. I might have jumped the gun on the frosting. My guess is mixing longer makes it stiffer and eadier to build with.

I did not like this recipe at all. The gingerbread was too dark in color and it tastes like molasses. I have a recipe that came with my gingerbread house molds and I’ve been making it for years. This year I was looking for a recipe with a little more flavor. This was NOT it. My other recipe calls for half cup of molasses and the gingerbread comes out a dark tan. This recipe called for 1 cup and was a very dark brown. Tasted horrible!

I used the frosting recipe and it was great!

Followed the recipe as written. Super easy to mix up and handle. I rolled it out on parchment, cut the shapes, removed the excess and they baked up beautifully. I live on a tropical island (80% humidity is normal), and the house has been sitting in an un-airconditioned room since last night and so far it still is perfect!

Wow that didn't work. Tried to keep the dough hot and only managed to burn it in the pot. Came out all crumbly and impossible to form into walls.

I have used this recipe for years. I use corn syrup instead of molasses because it is less expensive when I make 20 houses for Thanksgiving. It makes a tough cookie for construction. Not really a cookie for eating.

this dough worked great definitely saving this recipe

The trick with this recipe is it needs to be very warm to roll out. I put small manageable batches in a zip lock bag and microwaved it before rolling it out directly on the parchment paper. It makes a sturdy gingerbread house. The frosting was perfect for construction.

Like so many others, I had a crumbly mess. My boys were disappointed so we went with another recipe to make our house. I wish I would’ve read the reviews first.