Spooky Halloween Gingerbread Church

After two days my Halloween gingerbread house is finished. I used the same recipe for the gingerbread that I've previously used, from the Tesco Real Food website, and added some grated orange zest. I also used the template from the same site but I adapted it slightly and made a template for the clock tower. Thankfully I suffered no breakages as I never had any spare dough but I did have some of the liquid left over (possibly due to my tablespoon measures of golden syrup & treacle being very generous) which I boiled up, added cream & made a very nice toffee sauce.

 

I used chocolate cake covering to glue the walls together, which was a genius idea from Susan, which she first used with her Valentine house. The cake covering sets really quickly so you don't need to support it for ages with tin cans, as well as tasting a lot better than royal icing. As always though, the walls never end up straight however carefully I cut them, which doesn't help when it comes to assembling - another good reason to use the cake covering as gaps can be filled more easily.

I bought a pack of cheap plastic Halloween accessories from a pound shop along with some chocolate ghosts, Haribo sweets and chocolate fingers which were used to decorate the structure.

If you fancy joining in with mine & Susan's Halloween Gingerbread House Challenge you can add your post to the linky below and grab the code and add it to your own blog so others can join in. Please go and have a look at the other entries in the challenge & show them some comment love.

Halloween Gingerbread House Challenge

Last January myself and Susan decided that we should make a gingerbread house for every occasion throughout the year to get some practice in for our Pièce de résistance at Christmas.

Firstly we had Valentines Day

and then Easter

we were going to make one in the Summer but never got around to it, so it's been a few months since our last attempt but as it's getting ever closer to Christmas there is no backing out of our last chance for a practice before the big one.

We've been roping in as many willing gingerbread house makers as possible who we hope will enjoy making and decorating possibly their first gingerbread house ever, and have set up a Linky so everyone can link their posts up and see everyone elses posts at the same time. We've set it up as a blog hop so you can add the code to the bottom of your post and others will find it easier to add their links too.

If you are a pro gingerbread house maker or have never made one before it doesn't matter, as long as you have made a Halloween gingerbread house for this Halloween you can join in with our challenge. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, we just want everyone to have fun and possibly learn some new skills and tips along the way.

The linky is open until a week after Halloween so hopefully there is plenty of time to join in.

There are lots of gingerbread recipes on the internet and I've used the one on the Tesco Real Food website, which also has a template.

You can find us both on twitter if you want to join in with some gingerbread house chat - @susankmann @jessies_kitchen

Chocolate Easter Gingerbread House

It doesn't seem long since myself and Susan were making our Valentine Gingerbread Houses and to be honest I didn't really fancy making one for Easter but we did make a promise that we would make one for each event in the year as practice for our Christmas ones.

This one can't really be called a 'Gingerbread' house as it doesn't contain any ginger. I used the same recipe as I previously used but instead of using ginger and mixed spice I added cocoa powder. 

I remembered from last time that I'd read a tip about rolling the dough out straight onto the baking paper and cutting it out on there - this avoids it going out of shape when you lift it onto the baking tray - it also avoids having to flour your worktop to prevent it from sticking, meaning less mess to clear up too!

This time instead of gluing it together with Royal Icing, which had taken too long to set last time as I'd made it too thin, I used Silver Spoon white chocolate cake covering, which sets really quickly. I thought it would also taste nice with the chocolate flavour house. I also stuck the house together on it's end which seemed easier than trying to make all 4 walls stand up at the same time.

I left overnight to harden up and decorated with more white chocolate cake covering and lots of Cadbury's mini eggs and Asda 'teeny weeny' chocolate eggs dipped in more cake covering to stick on. I ran out of mini eggs so unfortunately the roof wasn't completely covered.  As I used the cake covering instead of icing there was a lot less mess to clear up as the icing usually ends up in clouds covering the kitchen.

The house isn't my best effort and it's not very inventive but I think with all the chocolate and marshmallow bunnies it should taste good.

Don't forget to check Susan's house out too and feel free to join us over the Summer for our next one.

If you think my blog is worthy of a vote in the BritMums 'Brilliance in Blogging' awards please click on the badge below and vote for Jessies Crazy Kitchen, number 11 in the TASTY category

Valentine Gingerbread House

Before Christmas I made a gingerbread house. It was relatively easy to be honest & the kids loved it...on New Years day they ripped it apart and ate it and I hope that it will be our new Christmas/New Year tradition. Whilst chatting to Susan Mann on Twitter at the beginning of January she mentioned that she would like to give a gingerbread house a go, so we (half joking) said that we should do one for every event during the year...starting with Valentines Day, and then by Christmas we would have the houses down to a fine art.


I mistakenly thought that as the last one was straightforward this one would be too....I was wrong! Firstly, even though I had a tonne of sweets to decorate the house, I had forgotten to get the boiled sweets for the windows so they would have to stay glass-less. In hindsight it is probably a good thing as they would've ended up smashed to pieces anyway. I used the same recipe for my gingerbread as last time but I was rushing a bit as I'd left it a bit late in the day & was racing against the clock before school pick up. The dough was a bit drier than last time which made it a bit more difficult to roll out neatly...I then rushed cutting it which resulted in uneven edges when it was baked. I then messed up cutting a heart in my door & cut another door too small....


When it came to sticking the walls & roof together I made up the royal icing and added some pink food colouring to it. That tiny bit of extra liquid seemed to make the icing a bit too runny meaning that the walls didn't stick as quickly as last time and needed to be held in place & propped up with cans of tomatoes & jars of peanut butter....and then one of the walls fell down, breaking into 3 pieces! A bit of patience, some extra icing and some more tin cans it was eventually all built and ready to be decorated.


I used a variety of sweets including Haribo heart throbs, Asda rainbow buttons, raspberry mushrooms and strawberry mallows, pink Smarties, mini candy canes, pink & red dragees, Asda cake sprinkles and Swizzels Matlow Love Hearts, all stuck on with more pink coloured Silver Spoon Royal Icing.


After the initial falling apart of the walls I really enjoyed decorating it, with some help from Hanna, who I suspect was more after stray sweets rather than wanting to help!


Roll on the next event which I think is going to be Jack's birthday next month.....am I brave enough to attempt a Peppa Pig house!

Gingerbread Cupcakes

I spotted a recipe for Gingerbread cupcakes in a magazine and thought I would give them a go for the School Christmas Fair but whilst searching the Internet for a mini gingerbread man cutter (to make the decorations for the top) I came across a lovely recipe on The Pink Whisk. I love that blog, the recipes are easy to follow with step by step instructions and Ruth herself is lovely.


I had already seen a simple recipe for Spiced Cookies on Fabulicious Food so I was going to follow that recipe for the mini gingerbread men toppers.


You can find Ruth's recipe for Gingerbread Cupcakes here, but here is my version (different topping).


Gingerbread Cupcakes


115g butter, softened
55g dark brown sugar
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
310g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp ground ginger
150ml treacle
230 ml Greek yoghurt


Cinnamon Buttercream


110g butter at room temperature
60ml skimmed milk at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
500g icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp cinnamon

• Cream together the butter and sugars
• Beat in the egg.
• Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl
• Add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture along with the treacle and yoghurt
• Stir until combined
• Fill cupcake cases 2/3 full and bake in 180 degree (C) oven for 25-30 minutes

• Allow cakes to cool on a wire rack before icing
• Beat together the butter, milk, vanilla, half the icing sugar and the cinnamon until smooth and creamy
• Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat well
• Ice the cakes and decorate with mini gingerbread men (recipe here)

Spiced Christmas Cookies

Ever since I lived in the US baking cookies at Christmas has become a tradition in this house. I make them with the Children and  they give them to Aunts Uncles and Grandparents as presents. I'm not very good at writing recipes down that we've used though so unless I can locate the magazine or website where we found the recipe we usually use a different one every year.


This year I have found THE best recipe, it is so easy to make and the dough is so easy to use - no sticking and very easy to roll out - and it tastes great too.


The recipe I found is from Fabulicious Food - Ren has lots of gorgeous recipes on there so if you haven't checked them out already make sure you do. Ren's cookies look amazing, her icing is so neat. I won't show you the iced ones that I made for the Christmas Fair as they are no match for hers!


I decided to use the recipe to make some mini gingerbread men to decorate my Gingerbread Cupcakes but as I made so many I thought it would be nice to wrap them up to sell on the cake stand at the School Christmas Fair alongside the larger iced ones.


Polish Spiced Christmas Cookies

110g unsalted butter 
110g soft, dark brown sugar
6 heaped tablespoons runny honey
1 egg
450g plain flour 
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
2 tablespoons mixed spice
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
100g icing sugar

• Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a small pan until the butter has just melted
• Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, stir together
• Add the egg and mix well
• Add the melted butter/sugar to the dry ingredients and mix until a dough forms
• If the mixture is too dry add water 1 tablespoon at a time until it comes together 
• Roll out on a floured surface to the thickness of a pound coin
• Use cutters to cut out the shapes and place on greased baking trays (I use silicone baking sheets)
• Bake in 200 degree (C) oven for 7-8 minutes
• Cool on a wire rack

 

 

I used tulip cupcake cases to hold 15 mini gingerbread men and then placed them into a Christmas cellophane bag.