Kirstie's Handmade Britain

This gingerbread house is fun to make, great to look at and absolutely delicious!

Makes one house with enough spare gingerbread to make biscuits too

• 675g plain flour (plus extra for dusting)
• 1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground all spice
• 175g unsalted butter
• 225g soft light brown sugar
• 1 large, free range egg
• 6 tbsp golden syrup

For the royal icing

• 1 large, free range egg white
• 250g icing sugar, sifted
• 2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

To decorate

• Sweets, sprinkles and anything else you fancy

1. First, get cracking on your gingerbread. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices into a large bowl, then rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you have a texture resembling fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix well.

2. Warm a bowl (stick in the microwave or run it under the hot tap for a bit) and mix the syrup and the egg together in the warm bowl - much easier to do it this way, believe me. Bung the wet mixture onto the dry and mix it all up to form a soft, smooth dough. I do this in my freestanding mixer with a dough hook, but you can do it by hand just as well.

3. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill it for at least 1 hour (2 would be better – overnight better still).

4. You could crack on with the royal icing at this juncture. Get a very large mixing bowl (freestanding mixer with paddle attachment even better) tip in the icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice and beat for at least five minutes. You may need to add a little cold water, if the mix is too dry and crumbly, but add the water very slowly. Conversely if the mixture is too loose, add more icing sugar. After about 5 minutes of beating you should have a thick, very white meringue type mixture that holds its peak. Store in an airtight container in the fridge until needed.

5. Cut out templates for your house. I do two sides walls which are 16cm by 13cm, two gable end walls which are 16cm by 13cm rising to a point in the centre of 23cm, and finally two roof pieces which are 20.5cm by 15.5cm.

6. Roll the chilled dough out on a floured surface to a thickness of about 5mm and cut round the templates. Lay the pieces onto baking sheets, lined with silicone paper and the put back into the fridge for another hour. I actually put mine in the freezer and bake them from frozen, but really chilled is fine. This stops the pieces from spreading during cooking. Cut out any cookie shapes with the spare dough at this stage too (or freeze the rest of the dough for another day).

7. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4 and bake the gingerbread for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. As soon as they are out of the oven, get those templates on top of the hot pieces pronto and cut round the outline to give yourself really sharp edges. You need to do this before the gingerbread cools down and crisps up. Get moving! When they have firmed up, cool completely on wire racks.

8. It is at this stage in the proceedings that I veer away from the norm as far as decorating gingerbread houses go – I like to pipe my decorations on the house before it is assembled. If you are just going for the stick-masses-of-sweets-on approach, then do this after you have built the house.

9. Put some of the royal icing into a piping bag and pipe windows, roof tiles, doors or whatever your heart desires all over the outside of the house. Then (this is important, listen up) leave them to dry overnight.

10. The next day, you can handle your flat pack house without smudging all your piping. Pipe a good thick line of royal icing down the edges of the back of the house and stick on the two sides. You may need an extra pair of hands here, or do what I do and have a complicated mechanism of propping the walls against kitchen utensils, jars, cans etc. Then add the front wall and finally the roof panels. Royal icing is your cement and may be used liberally. It is snow, after all.

11. Add sweets, edible baubles and any other intricacies that appeal. Stand back and bask in the glow of achievement. If your walls are slightly wobbly insist that they are meant to be that way and cross that person of your Christmas card list.