My gingerbread greenhouse: Tips, tricks, and Royal icing recipes 🍭

Ho-ho-ho and welcome to my favourite post ever! We are leaving in a few days to go home for the holidays and I couldn't physically leave without posting this incredibly beautiful and yet so challenging recipe. As you may know by now, Christmas is my season. And the season couldn't be complete without a gingerbread house!

The process of building the greenhouse has been healing. At first, I wanted to get over it and go to the final step: take beautiful pictures and schedule it on my calendar. Silly me, with so many last-minute deadlines and things to do, I forgot that the purpose of this blog and this whole process was, and still is, joy: finding joy in little things. I followed an apparently good vegan recipe, but the pieces I (and my husband) had spent an entire weekend preparing, crumbled. Also, the isomalt sugar stuck to the parchment paper and, to top it, I didn't make the pieces thick enough.

I decided to start all over again: I followed Martha Stewart's recipe, got myself some rulers, made some templates, and bought gelatine sheets. Most importantly, I decided I was going to enjoy the process because it's Christmas only once a year ✨

Anyway, this whole greenhouse obsession came straight from Constellation Inspiration greenhouse. Her greenhouse is what gingerbread house dreams are made of. For the past year, I've been O B S E S S E D with it: I knew I needed to recreate it. And here it comes:

This year's Gingerbread house is my best attempt, and even though I see these beautiful pictures, I realise I have to practice my cookie icing skills 🙃

I find it could be useful for others to find here some tips from my trials and errors:

• Always, always, ALWAYS freeze your pieces before baking them for at least 10 minutes: it reduces the expansion of the dough considerably

• Before you bake them, make sure your pieces are well aligned, gently correct them if they aren't!

• Form pieces 0.2 to 0.3 mm thick, anything less is very likely to crumble

• If you don't have a kit, write down what you are planning to do and prepare the templates. This will not only give your gingerbread pieces more precision, but it will also help you enjoy the whole process more. During my first attempt this year, my husband and I spent hours measuring dough and double-checking the pieces before baking them. I was completely exhausted at the end. And the pieces crumbled. Anyhow, for my second attempt, I prepared the pieces in advance and it was heaven to just use the samples as my guide ✨

• After cooling down the cookies, polish each piece with a cheese grinder or a zest grinder, it will make them easier to assemble.

• For the windows, if you are using isomalt sugar instead of gelatine sheets, use a silicone mat below to avoid any possible sticky accident.

• Don't assemble the house until all the pieces have been decorated with royal icing.

• Let the royal icing dry before touching anything - just trust me on this one.

• Prepare two royal icings: a sturdy one for sticking/gluing the pieces together, and a second one for decorating. The one for gluing mustn't have any water content, that is only egg white and powder sugar. For decorations, add some water and/or any extract of your choice, but very little: we don't want a runny icing that will spread.

• Try your cookie recipe before deciding to bake a gingerbread house and avoid any surprises.

• If you want to add any particular decoration to your façade, take a little of cookie dough and add some water, and pipe the mixture as desired.

• Check as many pictures and cookie decorations as possible before decorating your house: this will make your gingerbread house/pieces/cookies more consistent ✨

Royal icing

Ingredients

2 egg whites 340g powder sugar

Method

1. In the bowl of a standing mixer, add the egg whites and whisk at medium-high.

2. Add the powder sugar in three times: if it's too dry, add 1 table spoon at a time of egg white.

3. Once it's thick and doesn't fall from a spoon, divide your mixture in two:

   • Take half of the "White" royal icing as it is and place it in a piping bag. Use it for gluing and assembling your gingerbread house.

   • For the remaining royal icing, go back to your standing mixer and add 2 tablespoons of cold water and mix on medium-high until well incorporated. If you have colorant, put 1/3 or 1/2 of your white royal icing in a piping bag and use it to decorate. Mix the remaining royal icing with the colorant of your choice, grab a piping bag, place your coloured royal icing inside and decorate your pieces and cookies 🍪