Gingerbread Recipe

My mother has this great recipe for gingerbread. It's firm enough for houses, yet soft enough to eat without breaking your teeth.

Melanie's Gingerbread Recipe

Ingredients

• 6 1/2 cups of flower
• 1 tablespoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup solid vegetable shortening
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 12oz jar of Grandmas Molasses
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• Royal Icing
• Candies, frosting (either store-bought or homemade), fondant for decorating.

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Mix flour, ginger, and baking soda in a large bowl. Set aside.
• Cream shortening and sugar in mixer with paddle attachment. Add molasses and lightly beaten eggs. Blend well. Switch to dough hook. Gradually add dry ingredients. Knead in remaining flour, if necessary. Chill dough 1 hour for best rolling results.
• Line sheet pans with parchment paper. Roll out dough to 1/8-inch thick directly onto cookie sheets. Cut patterns, removing excess dough. Chill 10 minutes in freezer before baking. Bake for 8-12 minutes. Start checking at 8 min. The small pieces naturally cook faster then larger pieces.
• Re-cut pieces after baking for even edges while they are still hot. Let cookies cool on sheet pan.
• Next decorate your cookies or assemble your house however you would like.

Tips

• Put like sizes on the same cookies. This helps with even cooking.
• If it spreads too much you're batter is too moist.

Gingerbread Houses

So every year I think about entering the gingerbread house competition at The Grove Park Inn and every year I see who wins and think I'm not ready yet.

 Yeah definitely not ready. But that does not stop me from doing my own creations at home. Right?
My mother does a bible study with my sister and three other little girls and for their Christmas party and I was to teach them how to build and decorate ginger bread houses. It took me an hour and a half to put the house I did beforehand to show them. It took them three. So if you are going to make gingerbread houses with your kids don't think its a quick project. Even if your making it from a kit set aside at least three to four hours.

This one is mine. I added a wood pile to the side using left over gingerbread 

So after all the work with the girls and dealing with sides that were too heavy because of the overloaded decorations, I think they turned out pretty cute.

We baked the gingerbread from scratch and I will do a tutorial of how I did the first house with recipes later. Right now I'm a little gingerbreaded out!