Thoron's first gingerbread house, baked from scratch,
loving decorated, was a gift of edible art for his parents in 1982.
Sift together flour, soda, nutmeg and ginger in first bowl. Melt shortening or butter in a saucepan or soften in a microwave.
Pour softened shortening or butter into a bowl large enough for mixing dough. Add sugar and molasses. Mix well. Gradually stir in about 2 cups of the flour mixture. Work in the remaining flour mixture with hands.
Divide the dough into three equal portions. Form each portion into a ball.
Ideally, you refrigerate the dough balls at this time. I’m not sure we ever did that.
Place each ball on ungreased baking sheet. Roll until about ¼ inch thick. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Remove excess dough from sides of cookies; put the excess back into your mixing bowl.
Repeat with other two balls of dough.
Put one or two sheets of cookies into the oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove and allow to cool on the cookie sheet. Place third cookie sheet in oven and again bake for 12 to 15 minutes.
When you have an empty cookie sheet, roll out excess dough to ¼ inch thick. Cut more cookies. Again remove the excess dough and repeat until all the dough is used up. If you get tired of rolling cookies, just eat the excess dough. You’re probably hungry by then anyway. There are no raw eggs in the dough, so it’s safe.
If you are making gingerbread men and want to decorate them with dried currants or raisins, push the dried fruit into the cookies before you bake them. Warning-they almost always fall off.
You can also decorate with frosting.
Frosting recipe
This recipe was actually designed to make a gingerbread house, which my husband, Thoron, food artist that he is, did make for the first few years of our marriage. Often, we have simply made these up as cookies to munch on during the holidays. The frosting is supposed to serve as mortar as well as decoration for the gingerbread house. Most of the older recipes call for two egg whites. We no longer use this, due to health concerns.
Gingerbread houses can only be successfully made during cool, dry weather. Never make a gingerbread house during the humidity of Maryland's late summer.
If you like, you can make a La Befana gingerbread house for Yule or La Befana's festival on January 5 or 6.
Thoron's first gingerbread house, baked from scratch,
loving decorated, was a gift of edible art for his parents in 1982.
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CPC Yule Gingerbread Houses
These photos (below) are of a gingerbread house decorating activity at Chesapeake Pagan Community's Yule. As an activity, children attending the Yule event over the years were encouraged to decorate a pre-baked and assembled Gingerbread House. Ove the years, Myth made suggestions like, this could be a house for "the Gingerbread Baby," "a Julnisse," or "La Befana." The children never seemed to care who the house was decorated for...
Nevertheless, decorated gingerbread houses remained a favorite Yule activity for years.
Our 2015 house, set up in the children's activity area, ready to decorate.
Getting started...
The 2015 picture perfect house
at the CPC Yule in Maryland