I love the holiday season – it’s so full of fun and creative things to do while you are celebrating your holiday traditions. Gingerbread houses are great fun to make, and as a bonus you can eat all your artistic work at the end. Thinking of gingerbread houses got me wondering how this became a tradition that we associate so strongly with Christmas and so I decided to investigate.
From my research I learned that Gingerbread has been around in Europe since the 11th century – when crusaders brought home spice from their adventures – and slowly but surely gingerbread made it’s way through Europe until it reached Germany. This is where the traditional Lebkuchen – that we use to construct our gingerbread houses today – originated from. In many European countries gingerbread baking was a specific component of the bakers’ guild, and intricately decorated gingerbreads were seen as a mark of quality. In the 1800s gingerbread houses began to show up. According to certain researchers, the first gingerbread houses were the result of the well-known Grimm’s fairy tale Hansel and Gretel.
Lovely example of an elegant traditional gingerbread house from www.highlandsmuseum.com.
So why gingerbread houses at Christmas time then? Gingerbread that had been shaped and decorated was especially sold outside churches on Sundays. Surely enough this tradition made it’s way across the pond to America, where it survived as gingersnap cookies gained popularity as Christmas tree decorations, and soon thereafter the gingerbread houses followed. From there this tradition moved into kitchens all over the world.
This is such a wonderful activity to keep the kids entertained on Christmas day, and trust me, they won’t mind eating it afterwards either. Lebkuchen is flexible in terms of flavour and can range in taste from spicy to sweet. The ingredients usually include honey, spices such as nutmeg, aniseed, coriander, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and allspice. It’s also super easy to cut into a variety of shapes.
You can jazz up your Lebkuchen recipe by adding nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts, or even candied fruit. If you live somewhere that experiences summer Christmas, like we do in South Africa, try serving your Lebkuchen with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to help to beat the heat. Here is a traditional Lebkuchen recipe that you can try at home this Christmas: Lebkuchen Recipe.
Some vibrant and funky examples from www.volusion.com. Aren’t the colours fab?!
I love getting creative in the kitchen and gingerbread houses are one of the best ways to incorporate your artistic flair into your cooking. Once you have made your gingerbread shapes you will need to stick them together to start constructing your masterpiece. You can use piping bags to do this but if you don’t have a piping bag you can make a substitute using an ordinary plastic bag. Here is a short video tutorial on how to do this easily: Turn a plastic bag into a piping bag.
You have a few options when it comes to “cementing” your gingerbread pieces together:
- Melted sugar glue (be cautious with this method as melted sugar gets hot, hot, hot!) You can see an easy two step method here: Melted sugar glue
- Good old fashioned royal icing is always a good go to.
- Melted caramel – not very stable but yummy for less load bearing construction
- Melted gummy bears – perfect for decorations
- Melted marshmallow – great for gluing your roofs and walls
I love this clever use of lolly pops as decoration from www.sweetopia.net
Once you have selected your gluing method and gingerbread shapes, you will need to carefully spoon some of your melted sugar glue or caramel into your piping bag and squeeze it out along the edges. Don’t over do it though! Then press the edges of your glued gingerbread shapes together. Hold then firmly in place for a few seconds allowing the “cement” time to cool and set. Marshmallow or gummies are more easily applied with the back of a spoon.
I hope you have loads of fun with your gingerbread houses this festive season and I would love to see photos of what you made in the comments! Merry Christmas.
