Cutest Little Gingerbread Houses

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Cutest Gingerbread Houses – part 1

Last year we made 400-500 of these adorable gingerbread houses. We couldnt keep up with the demand at times! Who knows if I will have time to make these this year, so here is my secret recipe! After many failed attempts this is now my go-to gingerbread recipe. Feel free to use butter over shortening, but know that the dough won’t be as silky and will be more difficult to work with. This is ready to go as soon as it comes together. NOTE! I use the Kitchenaid Commercial Mixer for this quantity. Please be careful and only make 1/2 a batch with most stand mixers.

Dry Ingredients

  • 6 cups all-purpose flour (900g)
  • 1/16 tsp baking powder (1g)
  • 4 tsp ginger (8g)
  • 1/2 tsp cloves or allspice (1g)
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients

  • 3/4 c shortening (150g) or 1.5 sticks butter
  • 1.5 c brown sugar (350g) (OR 340g white sugar + 1 1/2 T molasses)
  • 3 large eggs (only two eggs if XL)
  • 1/2 c corn syrup (185 g)
  • 1/2 c molasses (175 g)
  • 1 T water – ONLY if dough is dry

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 375.
  2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a Large bowl.
  3. Cream together shortening (or butter) and sugars. Do not over mix. You don’t want air in the dough.
  4. Add the eggs, one at a time and mix. Scrape bowl.
  5. Add the molasses and corn syrup.
  6. Carefully add dry ingredients, one cup at a time. The dough should form a ball that is not sticky. If it is too dry add the additionl water.
  7. Bake. I can’t give an exact time – but I check the houses at 5 minutes and can get a good feel for how long the dough needs to bake. It should appear dry on the surface. Depending the design, let the dough get darker with more time in the oven, or let it stay a medium brown color.
  8. Don’t Eat. Just kidding, you can and you will. Yum. I will post assembling instructions soon! So there it is… my secret recipe I have tweaked over the years. I will put a link to the cutter we use below.

Notes: This dough is meant to be used right away, and the conditions have been adapted for high altitude and very little dough spread. If you need to make the dough the night before add a bit less of the dry ingredients. I also reduced the amount of spices so my kids would eat these as cookies. Add more ginger, allspice and cinnamon as you like. For an even stronger flavor, add less corn syrup and more molasses. The most important part is having the dough come together in a nice ball. Roll out on a counter with Flour. It shouldn’t be overly sticky. If it is, add a bit more flour. I roll this out to 1/16 of an inch for the cute little gingerbread houses between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll to your liking and adjust baking time as needed. Link to purchase my favorite cutter for this!
There is an even smaller version below. Enjoy!

P.S. I just started a coding bootcamp at University of Utah. So maybe it will motivate me to blog again! Let’s hope things get fancy around here!