Gingerbread House Recipe and Patterns

The Black Cat Cafe's Vanessa Daou knows her way around a gingerbread house. Use her easy step-by-step photo guide, gingerbread recipe and printable templates to build a sweet little home of your own.

Click on the gallery tab to view the step-by-step photo guide of how to build a gingerbread house and see below for the templates and recipes.

Gingerbread House Templates to Download and Print:

• Gingerbread House Template 1
• Gingerbread House Template 2
• Gingerbread House Template 3
• Gingerbread House Template 4

Gingerbread Recipe:

Time to make: 35 minutes
Construct & decorate: 45 minutes
Start-to-finish (including cooling) 4hrs
Yield: 1 house, plus some extra dough

Ingredients:
1 Cup Shortening
1 Teaspoon Baking soda
1 Cup Brown sugar
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Cup Molasses
4 Teaspoon Ground Ginger
2 Eggs 4 Teaspoon Cinnamon
6 Cups Flour
1 Teaspoon Ground Cloves

Directions:
Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350F.

Either by hand or with an electric mixer, cream together shortening, brown sugar and molasses. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (if mixing by hand it may be necessary to knead the dough a bit at the end).

Divide dough in half. Roll out each on the parchment paper to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out templates and place on top of the gingerbread. Cut around template outline. Remove and save the extra dough for another use (make some gingerbread men!)

Bake 15-20 minutes rotating twice during cooking.

Re-cut outlines after removing from oven. Let cool completely (at least 2 hours) before assembling.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:
3 Egg whites
1/2 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
3 1/2 cups Confectioner's Sugar
Mix together egg whites and cream of tartar. Add confectioner's sugar and mix until combined.
Store icing in a zip lock bag.

Directions:
Assemble the house per photos.

Decorate with your choice of candies.

Leave overnight to set.

Recipe courtesy of the Black Cat Cafe & Bakery.

More on Gingerbread:

• Get more gingerbread recipes here.
• These gingerbread men are one of our favorite Christmas cookies.
• Or, you can fake it with these gingerbread pull-apart cupcakes. Yum!
• Flip through a whole gallery of gingerbread houses.
• If you like this house, you'll love the life-sized gingerbread house AOL built and decorated for St. Jude.
• (It was modeled after this 800-pound gingerbread house.)