Gingerbread Houses

I used to make a gingerbread house every year.

In the fall of 1982, I spent four months in London. That Christmas, I decided to make the Tower of London in gingerbread. It came out looking rather more like a Moorish cloister, but it was pretty divine, in I may say so myself. It had a square tower at one corner, and a crenellated round tower opposite. The round tower was tricky - right after it came out of the oven, we rolled the still soft piece of dough around a tube made from shirt cardboard.

At some point, I stopped making a house every year - there just wasn't the time, and I wasn't likely to top the Tower of London. But we did one two years ago, with Miss M. and her cousins involved in the construction, and we only didn't do one last year because my brother got married and that party was rather all-consuming. I think it's got to be back in the annual event category - a simple house with lots of help from all the little cousins.

I've always used the gingerbread recipe from the original Times cookbook, but with some extra flour and extra spices. Start by making a template out of shirt cardboard: the front/back, the side, and the roof. You'll need two of each. Roll the dough out on parchment, so that you can slide the parchment onto a baking sheet and bake it right on the parchment. Cut out openings for doors and windows before you put it in the oven. Make sure and bake through - you might want to bake it a little longer and at a lower temperature than the recipe specifies. If you're feeling up to it, you can used crushed sourballs or lifesavers for stained glass windows, with little strips of rolled dough for muntins. You can also do some decorating with dough before baking, like making shutters, or "architectural detail" along the corners. My favorite roofing material is Necco wafers - it makes a roof that looks like Mediterranean tile. And yes, eat the house, don't store it. Or bring it to work and have the office vultures devour it. I remember taking hunks to school in my lunch bag, well into January.

The only thing to use for icing (glue) is royal icing, which is just egg white, lemon juice and powdered sugar. It's pure white, it's easily dyed with food color, and it hardens like cement to hold the house together, and hold all of the decorations in place. You can also use it as decoration on its own - make a bit of green icing and use it for vines, or make yellow shutters.

And about the roof...I always "sew" it together with a couple of loops of dental floss to "hinge" it at the top. A sturdy needle will slide right through. Sewing it together means that the roof pieces won't slide off before the icing sets up. The dental floss is the only part of the house you can't eat.

The other candy I like to use (beyond Neccos for the roof) includes Life Savers (but only white ones), candy canes, miniature marshmallows, dragees (which are apparently illegal in California), gum drops (but only spice flavored ones, because they taste better with the gingerbread), and cinnamon red hots.

If you read all of the comments on my post about Hanukkah last week, you'll have seen one from my best friend from high school. She mentioned, among other things, those gingerbread houses of yore. So, highschoolbff, this one's for you. (And if you commented on that post, thank you - I appreciate the wisdom and heart that came from each one of you.)