It's Christmas time! Let's make a Gingerbread house!!!!

It's that time of year again...and I don't know about you but I think there is something magical about Christmas time. It is my favourite time of year and I love that I get to be creative and create some lovely things with my hands. I love to bake and make things and my daughter Hannah asked if we could make a gingerbread house for her teacher as a gift. I thought that was an awesome idea so I thought that I would share it with you so that you could give it a go....!

Ingredients....

250g butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 egg yolks

1 cup golden syrup

5 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

3 tsp ground ginger

Icing

2 egg whites

2 cups icing sugar

water

Lollies

Method

Beat butter, add sugr and beat well. Add egg yolk and beat. Add golden syrup and mix with wooden spoon until it comes together and forms a dough.

knead dough on floured bench until smooth and firm

you may need to add more flour

make sure you get the kids involved!..its fun!

Roll out dough and using your template cut out for your house cut out the desired shapes

You should have two rectangles for the roof, a bigger rectangle for the base and two triangles for the sides.

Place your shapes on a baking tray and in preheated 180deg oven bake for about 15 mins or until golden brown. cool.

To make icing, in a clean dry bowl combine icing sugar and egg whites. mix on high speed and you may need to add water. mix until smooth but it can't be runny..it has to stick to the beater like this so you can pipe it. Pipe it into a large ziplock bag or piping bag.

pipe icing onto gingerbread and decorate with lollies as desired...this is fun for the little one's!

Join sides together with icing piped on and on base

decorate with more icing and lollies!

Enjoy for christmas or wrap in clear cellophane and tie with a ribbon and give it as a gift!