HOW TO MAKE A GINGERBREAD HOUSE

Oscar Streit, owner of the German Home Bakery in Costa Mesa, said that any “lean” gingerbread recipe will work well for making houses. By lean, he means without eggs and nuts and other ingredients sometimes included in gingerbread man or cookie recipes.

This is a basic recipe for gingerbread house dough:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/4 cups molasses

2 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 tablespoon powdered ginger

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon lemon rind

2 tablespoons baking soda

9 cups flour

Preparation

To whipped cream, add all ingredients except flour and stir with a spoon for 10 minutes. Add flour, a portion at a time, working it into the wet mixture with your hands until smooth. Cover and chill overnight.

While the dough is chilling, design your house on paper or trace patterns from a book or any of several magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, that publish them this time of year.

When you have drawn each piece of the house (basic house: base large enough to include a front yard, four walls, two roof pieces, door and chimney), cut them out and gently trace the outlines onto cardboard. Cut out the pieces to use as templates in cutting the gingerbread dough.

The next day, preheat the oven to 300.

Break the gingerbread dough into chunks and roll out to a thickness of about 3/16 to 1/4 of an inch on large, greased and floured cookie sheets. A trick for rolling to a uniform thickness is to place 3/16-inch dowels on either side of the dough, so that the rolling pin will come to roll on the dowels when you have reached the final thickness.

Rolling the chilled dough takes a while, so to make sure the dough is in the right condition for cutting out the house pieces, chill it again, on the cookie sheets. The dough is ready when it feels as stiff as leather.

Place the cardboard templates on the dough and gently cut around their edges with a sharp knife. Leave 1/2 to 1 inch of space between house pieces on the cookie sheet. Scraps can be rechilled and used for cookies.

Cut openings for doors or windows with a sharp knife.

The dough probably will be dusty with flour residue, so brush each piece with water or an apricot glaze to assure uniform color or sheen after baking.

Bake about 20 minutes. For strength in the completed gingerbread house, said veteran baker Streit, it is important to not underbake the pieces. Gently lift an edge of a piece and check the underside; if the dough is starting to take on a darker color, the piece is done.

Remove the sheets from the oven and leave pieces on them to cool.

When the pieces are cool, you are ready to begin construction. Now is the time to make the “glue,” called royal icing, that will hold the house together.

For each batch of icing, mix: 1 pound confectioner’s (powdered) sugar, 3 egg whites (warmed to room temperature), 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar.

Blend the ingredients at low speed until smooth and then at high speed for up to 10 minutes or until the icing is fairly stiff. Add more sugar if necessary to achieve desired consistency. Avoid the temptation to make the icing gooey, thinking it looks stickier. Stiff icing dries much more quickly, which means the house will become solid more quickly.

The first and vital step in assembling your house is to glue the gingerbread base of the house to a piece of heavy cardboard with several globs of icing. This avoids the heartbreak of seeing a masterpiece slide off to certain destruction on the floor.

Check the fit of pieces before assembly. Trim with a sharp knife. Use icing like glue: Run a bead along the edge to be joined and on its mating surface. Hold pieces together for a few seconds.

Before gluing on roof pieces, use a knife to bevel the edges where they meet at the ridgeline of the house so that there is no gap between them.

When the roof pieces are glued with icing, fix them in place with toothpicks driven through the roof into a wall. The toothpicks can be easily removed the next day. The chimney should be glued onto the roof and fixed with a toothpick.

When the structure is complete, begin decorating. Mix food coloring in the icing as desired. If you are decorating with several colors simultaneously, keep the unused icing covered with damp cloth.

On large flat surfaces, such as in the front yard of the house, use a spatula to spread the icing. Elsewhere, use a cake-decorating gun or pastry bag with a decorating tip. Candies and other ornaments are glued on with a dab of icing.