Make A Gingerbread Village- Gingerbread House Recipe

Gingerbread is fun to make and an important part of holiday baking. This gingerbread house recipe is simple and easy to make, and perfect for Christmas baking and cookie creations during the holiday season.

The gingerbread is soft, yet strong enough to make gingerbread house pieces, and individual cookie cut outs to build a village of tiny houses.

Follow along to learn how to make gingerbread house cookies with this gingerbread house recipe.

Gingerbread House Cookies

This year I used this gingerbread house recipe to make a village of handmade one dimensional gingerbread houses. These little gingerbread houses are a unique spin on the classic three dimensional gingerbread house.

The cookies were hand cut and decorated in a simple fashion, and used to decorate the top of a gingerbread cake. The gingerbread cake became the base for a little gingerbread village.

Each cookie was unique, and fun to decorate. They were fairly easy to make, and I'm sure even kids will be able to try their hand at decorating these sweet cookies.

The gingerbread house cookies can also be used in your holiday decorating as well. Place them as ornaments on the tree, or add to a gift tag like we did with our dried orange slices.

The gingerbread is natural and festive, smells absolutely divine, and makes the house smell like Christmas.

This gingerbread cookie dough recipe is from a very old Newfoundland recipe.

Ingredients:

Brown Sugar: 1 cup brown sugar

Ginger: 1 teaspoon ginger

Baking Soda: 2 teaspoon baking soda

Cream Of Tartar: 2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Salt: ½ teaspoon salt

Whole Eggs: 2 whole eggs well beaten

Molasses: 1 cup molasses

Flour: 4 cups sifted all purpose flour

Cinnamon: ½ teaspoon cinnamon

Nutmeg: ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Cloves: ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

Vanilla: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

How To Make Gingerbread House Cookies

Here is a step by step description of making these gingerbread cookies, and you will also find detailed instructions in the recipe card below.

1. In a large bowl combine all of the dry ingredients except for the flour, including the brown sugar, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt.

2. Add the eggs, vanilla, and molasses, and mix well until smooth.

3. Cover and let rise for two hours.

4. Next add the flour, and mix with the other ingredients to make a soft dough.

5. Place dough on a floured flat surface, or between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll out using a rolling pin, ensuring an even thickness.

6. This is a somewhat stiff dough, although rolls out quite well.

7. Roll the dough nice and thin, about ¼ inch for crispier cookies.

8. To cut out these cookies there is no need for a gingerbread house template. They can easily be cut free hand.

9. Although you can definitely use a gingerbread house cookie cutter if you prefer.

10. It is not difficult to make the shape of a house. If cutting your gingerbread house cookies free hand, cut the cookies into simple little house shapes using a sharp knife or pizza cutter.

11. Gather up the excess dough, sprinkle with flour, and roll dough again. Cut into shapes.

12. Bake cookies at 350°F on a greased or parchment covered cookie sheet for 10 to 12 minutes.

13. Allow to cool on a wire rack before decorating

14. Decorate with Royal Icing to make all the little details and designs on your houses and shapes.

This recipe made enough dough for twenty four small houses, three trees, and two codfish.

Recipe Tips And Tricks

When cutting out the cookies, cut shapes of varying sizes and widths. Include little chimneys on a few of the houses as well.

Make the houses narrow and tall, and vary the shapes for a better aesthetic. Mix smaller with larger houses for an interesting look.

Any leftover dough from the edges of your cuttings can be used to make other gingerbread pieces and shapes for your village, like Christmas trees or other structures.

It should also be noted that these cookies are known to taste even better when they are a couple of days old.

Recipe Variations

There are many different gingerbread house recipes available.

This gingerbread house recipe is from a very old Newfoundland recipe without butter. Some gingerbread recipes have butter, and some do not.

The most commonly used spices in all gingerbread recipes include ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

How To Store

Store in an airtight container until ready to decorate.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do You Cut Gingerbread Without A Cookie Cutter?

Gingerbread can be cut with any sharp tool, such as a small knife or a pizza cutter.

The irregularity of the lines adds to the uniqueness of each piece of gingerbread.

Sketching out some simple designs to guide you before you start cutting can help with the shape and design of your gingerbread house pattern.

Check out designs for architectural house shapes on pinterest, for some guidance on what would would make an appealing display.

I used row houses from Newfoundland as inspiration for my own cookies.

How Do You Decorate With Royal Icing?

Royal icing is a beautiful smooth icing that flows well, and is not too thick or difficult to work with when making your cookie designs.

Royal icing is a homemade icing which has the perfect consistency for all the details on the gingerbread cookies, when made correctly.

The key is to get the icing to a consistency that will not spread, and will lay on the cookie much the same as it came out of the piping bag.

It’s important to have a very small round tip to squeeze the icing onto the cookies for a finer design. Mine wasn’t quite small enough, although I still like how they turned out.

Decorate the cookies with royal icing from a piping bag. You can use a ready made piping bag or a DIY piping bag using a freezer bag.

With a piping bag, pipe royal icing onto the front of the house for each cookie, outlining the front door, windows, icicles, and decorations on the little houses. There is no need to decorate the back of the house.

Using your own style, use royal icing to decorate your gingerbread house cookies. Your cookies will be totally unique.

How Do You Build A Village With Gingerbread House Cookies?

The best way to build a gingerbread village with gingerbread house cookies is to attach them horizontally onto a base, such as a cake.

Make little row houses all around the base, and then add them to another level at the top of the base.

Just about any base will do, and it doesn’t even have to be edible.

However I love the idea of building the village on a tall multilayer gingerbread cake with cream cheese frosting, so that is what I used.

Adhere the cookies with a small dollop of frosting, placing them all around the cake.

Then put a second level of cookies standing up together, on the top layer of the cake. Secure with frosting and toothpicks or skewers as needed, and if using toothpicks or skewers be sure to remove them before eating.

Top off with a dusting of snow (icing sugar), and some sugared walkways for a sweet finishing touch.

Conclusion

This gingerbread house recipe was perfect for making this festive cookie village.

The gingerbread house cookies were so much fun to bake and decorate. It was even more fun to build the village surrounding and topping the gingerbread cake.

I can definitely see this becoming a Christmas tradition for the whole family.

Since these cookies were made from gingerbread from a Newfoundland recipe, I thought it fitting to make gingerbread row houses similar to those where my mom grew up on Queen’s Road in St. John’s Newfoundland.

This is also why there just had to be little gingerbread codfish.

Try your hand at making these cookies, and impress family and friends with your architectural flair.

Have you ever made gingerbread cookies, or built a gingerbread village? Be sure to leave a comment below to share your experience.

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