From homecooking.about-Tips for Building a Gingerbread House With Kids Hi, Im Jenny Gordon. Ive done hundreds of gingerbread houses through the years, and today, for About, Im going to show you how to involve your children in making and decorating gingerbread houses. Ingredients Needed for Gingerbread Houses We use: 1 c. shortening (I use butter) 1 c. sugar 1 c. molasses 1 egg 2 tbsp. vinegar 5 c. all-purpose flour 2 to 3 tbsp. ginger 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. cloves 1/2 tsp. salt Instructions for Building a Gingerbread House With Kids Always keep safety in the forefront of your mind. I dont plug in my mixer until were absolutely ready to start. I have two children, so we try to divide up the jobs equally. I always let the children add the ingredients, because again, this has a nice guard on it so they cant get their fingers caught in the paddle. I dont turn it on until all the ingredients are added anyway. There are certain things that moms need to do themselves. I like to add in the molasses because its so slow to pour out. Now were finished mixing our gingerbread, and were going to put it in the refrigerator to chill for about three hours. More Instructions for Building a Gingerbread House With Kids These are actual cookie cutter templates to make a mini gingerbread house. The trick to cutting out the dough with carboard template pieces is a pizza cutter. Youre going to lay this up against the side after youve floured it real well, and just zip, and make a nice cut. Additional Instructions for Building a Gingerbread House With Kids Parchment paper is a bakers best friend when it comes to gingerbread houses. Im patting out the dough so that its a little bit easier for the kids to roll out. Use 1/8-inch dowel rods as a guide. If its too thin, itll just snap after you put it together. Im going to leave the dough pieces on the parchment paper, because once you lift them, theyre going to start losing their shape. We want the pieces to be very hard, so were going to bake them at 375 degrees F for about 15 to 20 minutes. We have baked our gingerbread pieces, and weve stored them for several days while we went shopping to get all kinds of fun candy to use while were decorating our house. Chiclets gum; Rolos make good fence posts; gumdrops. Then we have little novelty things. We live in Florida, so theres always a chocolate alligator on our gingerbread house. Caramel squares for a chimney; candy canes - we make light posts out of these; pretzels hold things up, also make good fence posts. Were going to make two sugar cone Christmas trees, and well put them on our platter a little bit later on after theyve dried. Ive made some green royal icing. It dries rock hard, and it dries relatively fast. Notes on Building a Gingerbread House With Kids Kids are always going to lick their fingers and eat the candy and lick the candy, so if youre planning on giving it as a gift, you might want to rethink that. But its about making the memories. Other Tips for Building a Gingerbread House With Kids I just take my green wreath ring, make a nice little bow on the top. I always make sure each of the kids has their own icing bag. I always put a rubber band around the end of the bag, and I just use disposable bags. And that way when the kids squeeze the bag, the icing doesnt come out the other end. Sometimes its easier to decorate the rooftops before you ever put them on. The kids have decided that they would like to do an entire house out of bubble gum. Were going to make siding for our house. Miniature chocolate makes a nice little door. The best thing to do to start your gingbread house is to just make big lines with the royal icing, and some up the edges. If you need the sides to set up for a while before you put your roof on and you dont want to sit there and hold it too long, just put some canned goods inside. We always make a waterfall in our yard and a little pond, and of course, thats where our alligator hangs out. So heres our gingerbread man. I always give him a prop of a pretzel. We made a huge mess. I used my dollar-store tablecloth. Throw the tablecloth away for easy cleanup.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:34:32 +0000
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