Small Gingerbread House from Scratch

Yeah, it's made from scratch. No big deal.

Actually, let's be real. It's a huge deal and it took me forever. But it was perfect as a Christmas gift and I absolutely loved making it. 

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups all purpose flour (plus 1/2 Cup for dusting)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, allspice, and nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 Stick butter, softened
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 Tablespoon of water (may or may not be necessary) 

My Method

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. In a large bowl, combine the soft butter and brown sugar and beat for a couple minutes until the mixture is fluffy
3. Add the egg, vanilla, and molasses and mix well. 
4. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, spices, and salt until evenly distributed. Slowly add the dry mix into the wet. (I used my hands! It was sticky, but I think that's the only way to get everything mixed in well)
5. Toss the dough out onto a floured surface and work it a little, dusting it with flour as needed to prevent sticking. If the dough is to wet, add a little flour. If the dough is too dry, add a little water. Work it only as long as it needs to stick together.
6. Place the dough in parchment paper or plastic wrap (well floured) and put it in the fridge for at least an hour or until it's firm enough to be easily rolled. 
7. Place the chilled dough on a well floured surface and roll it out to 1/8-1/4 inch thickness. Make sure all of your dough is the same width.
8. Pick a template online (make sure it's pretty small!) and use it to cut out the pieces of the gingerbread walls, roof, etc. 
9. With the scraps (you can re-roll dough as many times as you need to), I cut out shapes (little gingerbread men, Christmas trees, etc) with mini cookie cutters to use for decoration later. 
10. Bake at 350* about 12 minutes or until edges are darker brown. 

Royal Icing

• 1 Cup Confectioners Sugar
• 1 teaspoon meringue powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1-2 Tablespoons water (do NOT pour in all at once)

1. Place half the cup of confectioners sugar in a medium to large bowl and mix in meringue powder. 
2. Add the vanilla and 1/2 tablespoon water
3. Mix until combined, then add a little more confectioners sugar and a little more water. Keep alternately adding until all of the confectioners sugar is used and the mixture is about the consistency of toothpaste. It needs to hold its shape when you push it with a spoon. 
4. Put the icing in a piping bag with a medium sized tip opening (nothing too small!)

Assembly

1. Make sure everything is COMPLETELY COOLED. This is very very important! Your royal icing will slip and melt if you use hot pieces of gingerbread.
2. Start with the front of your house. Take a piece of very sturdy cardboard and put a line of royal icing down the length of the front piece and paste it onto the board. 
3. Make sure as you are placing the side walls and back, you are putting icing down on the board before you place to prevent slipping!
4. Put one of the side walls on by piping royal icing along the length of the side of the house and pasting it to the front wall. Repeat with other wall. 
5. Put the back of the  house on by piping icing along the two sides.
6. Hold the walls in place (I just watched mine, I didn't need to touch them) for about a minute so icing has a chance to set just a little. 
7. LEAVE the house! give the icing time to set!
8. After an hour, pipe icing along the tip walls and paste the roof on. Wait another hour, then decorate!

*Feel free to use any kind of support system when drying your house.

Choose your favorite candies and frostings, and get creative! Have fun decorating!

Quick and Easy Red Velvet Cookies and Cake

Let's be honest. We've all made boxed cookies and cake before. When you're in a rush, those ready made mixes are perfect. I wanted to see if I could modify a box mix to quickly make a batch of cookies and cake for my team. 

The Cookies

• 1 Box Red Velvet Cake Mix
• 1 Stick Butter (room temperature or softer-not all the way melted!)
• 1 Egg
• 1/4 Cup Milk
• White Chocolate Chips (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 365*
2. Add together all of the ingredients (so so easy) and use an ice cream scoop to make rounds of cookies that are perfectly even on a well greased cookie sheet! 
3. Bake about 11 minutes or until set and a little brown on the bottom. 
4. You can use all of the dough to make cookies, or do what I did and do half cookies and half cake! For the cake, keep the dough and move on to the instructions below. 

The Cake

• The remaining mix from above 
• 1 (additional) egg
• 1/2 Cup Milk- 1 Cup Milk
• 1 teaspoon veggie oil

1. Reduce oven temperature to 350*
2. Add the additional egg and make sure it's well incorporated. Add half a cup of the milk, and then the veggie oil. Depending on the amount of batter you have left, you can add remaining milk until it becomes cake batter consistency (a little thicker than pancake batter) 
3. Put into whatever pan you like (I used my mini snowman baking pan above-so cute!)

After your cookies and your cakes cool, use royal icing to decorate and it will harden beautifully! 

Holiday Chocolate Peppermint Fudge Cake

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

I wanted to bake (what a surprise) a holiday treat using some pipework, so I decided to use some of the chocolate fudge I made to make a pretty delicious, peppermint under-toned cake

The Cake

• 1 Cup Melted Fudge (I used peppermint fudge that I made a couple days before; pick your favorite on Google or a personal recipe! Be sure it's nice and sweet so it adds to the cake perfectly!)
• 1/4 Cup Veggie Oil
• 1/2 Cup Room Temperature Butter
• 1.5 Cups Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 Teaspoon Baking powder (heaping teaspoon!)
• 1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
• 2 Cups Sifted All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 to 1 Cup Milk (you'll see why there's a range)

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. Melt the fudge (I would use a double boiler technique) and set it aside.
3. Combine the veggie oil, butter, and sugar and beat until fluffy in a large bowl. Add the eggs and beat again, add vanilla.
4. In a medium bowl, combine baking soda, baking powder, and flour. Whisk until well distributed. 
5. Slowly mix in the dry mix. When it's too thick to blend, add milk a little at a time and keep alternating until you are done with the dry mix. You might have some milk left over-it's okay! The consistency of your fudge might require more or less. The batter shouldn't be too thick, but should be thicker than pancake batter. 
6. Bake in your choice of pans, about 20 minutes. Start checking your cakes at 15 until toothpick inserted comes out clean! Your choice of pans will change the baking times. I used two 9x9 inch square pans. 

For the frosting, you can use a simple butter-cream and just cover the cake. If you like to use your fancy piping bag like I do, pick a frosting that isn't going to be too runny and will hold the shapes you like. Since the cake is peppermint. I reccomend a simple chocolate or vanilla frosting. 

Have fun with it!