photo by Look at My Photos

Here’s the great big Kung Foodie collection of gingerbread links!

I’ve spent a number of hours combing the web for the best house pattern links. This is an edited list of the ones I found to be the most unique and/or well documented. The King Arthur Flour website has probably the easiest and most detailed tutorial on building gingerbread houses. If you’re a beginner this is the best place to start.

Unusual Creations

• (Photo) Firquoet’s Gingerbread Star Wars Tie Fighter
  …a new companion to the edible At-At Walker
  (Photo) Rickynils’ Fractal Gingerbread Snowflakes
• (Photo) (Plan) 64bits’ Gingerbread PC Computer
• (Photo) (Plan) NASA Gingerbread Spacecraft

Advanced Patterns

• (Photo) (Plan) (Recipe) Haunted Dimensions Paris Disneyland Mansion
• (Plans, see below) more Haunted Dimensions Homes
  House 1, House 2, House 3, House 4
• (Photo) (Plan) (Recipe) Franky’s Attic Gingerbread Houses
  …a collection of 32 different patterns total!

Traditional Plans

• (Photo) (Plans, see below) Bob Villa This Old House
  Colonial, Saltbox, A-Frame, Side Gable
• (Plan) (Recipe) Gingerbread Lane
• (Photo) (Plan) (Recipe) Martha Stewart Gingerbread*

*recommended by Heidi at 101 Cookbooks

Gingerbread Books

• Christie Currie – Gingerbread Houses
• Aaron Morgan & Paige Gilchrist – Making Great Gingerbread Houses: Delicious Designs
• Joanna Farrow – Gingerbread Houses, Animals & Decorations
• Veronika Gunter – Weekend Crafter: Making Gingerbread Houses

Baking Tips

• Place aluminum foil or parchment under dough before rolling and cutting pieces. You can then easily move the foil/parchment to a baking pan without having to touch the dough. Just start with a fresh piece of foil for each batch.
• Roll your dough thin. Gingerbread will puff up a bit as a cooks. The thicker the pieces the harder it is to match edges, as well as keep your structure from falling apart due to weight.
• If your edges have curled while cooking you can quickly use a pizza cutter to trim them.
• Gingerbread fresh out of the oven is often still soft and can be molded into shape by placing on cans or other objects while cooling.

Frosting Tips

• If you feel safe making a batch of caramelized sugar glacee this holds much better than royal icing as a base mortar (although I wouldn’t recommend this if you have kids helping as it gets very hot and can easily cause burns).
• Make plenty of royal icing* ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than running out in the middle of mortaring a wall or frosting decorations.
• Ziploc baggies are great to use if you run out of disposable pastry bags while piping frosting. The mini sizes work perfectly if you just need a small amount of colored icing.
• Shuna at Eggbeater once showed me a great pastry bag trick during a cooking class she instructed. Just use a clothespin to pinch the cut end of the pastry bag shut if you need to stop in the middle of working. A small spring paperclip would also work (tho it’s not as cool).

* I prefer to use an eggless royal icing recipe which calls for meringue powder, which I get at my local baking supply shop. It’s possible that any store which carries Wilton products will have it as well.

This entry was posted Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 6:04 am and is filed under Crafting It, Daily Specials, Gingerbread Bites, Holiday Favorites .