Gingerbread House

If you have a few hours to spare one weekend between now an Christmas, use them to make a gingerbread house. I had a good time this week creating a template – with Molly, our youngest daughter – for a very English gingerbread house. Lots of the patterns around are Scandinavian (this gingerbread recipe comes from Norway), as they're much keener on making gingerbread houses than we are, so we decided to make a cottage/ramshackle farmhouse instead. We then made the house and stuck it together with toffee and iced the roof with dollops of snow. A final massive dusting of icing sugar did wonders for hiding any cracks and holes.A piping bag is handy for the toffee but not essential, and you need a large tray or cake board. The house here is on a 30cm by 50cm tray, leaving a bit of room for a garden.

Makes a small house

For the gingerbread dough:

450g runny honey
4 eggs
350g caster sugar
1kg plain flour
zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
100g ground almonds
100g ground hazelnuts
8 tsp ground mixed spice
pinch of salt
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the toffee: 225g white caster sugar

For the royal icing:

2 egg whites, beaten until frothy
450g icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon

To make the dough, heat the honey gently. Beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy, add the warm honey, and then combine the wet mixture with the remaining dry ingredients. Fold them gently together and knead into a soft dough. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it in the fridge for a few hours.

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4.

Roll out the dough thinly (approximately 5mm thick) and cut it into the shapes of your pattern.

Put the sections on greaseproof paper rubbed with a trace of sunflower oil, or a silicone mat. Bake each section in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown and leave to cool on a wire rack. The gingerbread will be soft when it comes out of the oven but cools to a crisp biscuit.

(The dough will keep for up to 4 weeks in the fridge. If you have any left over, make biscuits and shapes to hang on your tree.)

When you're ready to construct the house, make the toffee to use as glue. Melt the sugar slowly in a saucepan until it starts to brown. Take care not to let it burn. Pour the toffee into a measuring jug, and from there into the piping bag. Take care not to touch the toffee as it will be exceptionally hot. (To be extra safe, use heat-proof gloves.) Pipe the toffee out of the bag, using it to stick one bit of the house to the next.

Next make the royal icing for the base and snow on the roof. Whisk the beaten egg whites until frothy but not stiff, and mix in 2 tbs of icing sugar and the lemon juice to make a paste. Gradually add the rest of the icing sugar until the icing is soft and holds its shape. If the mix is still sloppy, add more icing sugar.

First spread the icing all over the base board quite thickly – like snow – using it to hold the walls in place. Then pipe it on to the house. For the one on page 15, we iced the tops of the windows and ridge of the roof and then dusted the whole thing with icing sugar.

If you don't eat it straight away, the gingerbread house will keep for months.