Royal chefs share recipe for a festive gingerbread house

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A gingerbread house fit for a Queen! Royal chefs share their recipe for festive treat with ornate lemon icing

  • The Royal Family Instagram shared their chefs’ guide to gingerbread houses
  • The Royal chefs supplied a recipe as well as a template for the house pieces
  • Melted boiled sweets were poured onto some sections to make the windows

By Sam Baker For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

If you’re looking for a baking project to get stuck into over Christmas, the Royal Family‘s chefs have revealed how to produce a show-stopping gingerbread house.

With Christmas Day only three sleeps away now, chefs in the Royal kitchens took to Instagram to spread some festive joy with an instructional video.

The Royal chefs produced a step-by-step guide to help you produce your very own gingerbread house, complete with ornate lemon-flavoured royal icing.

The video was posted on the Royal Family Instagram account earlier today with the caption: ‘In the run up to Christmas, the chefs in the Royal kitchens have shared their recipe for making the perfect Gingerbread House. 

The guide includes how to make the dough and how to construct the house

Chefs from the Royal Family’s kitchens have shared a step-by-step guide to help make a an impressive gingerbread house this Christmas

How to make the gingerbread 

How to make the dough

Ingredients

  • 1000g plain strong flour
  • 14g bicarbonate of soda
  • 28g ground ginger
  • 14g ground cinnamon
  • 355g unsalted butter
  • 500g light brown sugar
  • 140g egg
  • 175g golden syrup 

Method

  1. Mix flour, bicarbonate and spices together
  2. Add cold diced butter and continue mixing until crumb stage is reached
  3. Add sugar and briefly combine
  4. Then add eggs and syrup and mix until dough is formed
  5. Divide into 2 blocks, knead together by hand and flatten
  6. Wrap and chill for a few hours before rolling to approx. 5mm thickness for the house parts and approx. 3mm for smaller decorative parts
  7. Cut gingerbread house shapes using template
  8. Place on baking trays and chill again before baking
  9. For windows, crush boiled sweets into the spaces you have cut

How to make the Royal icing

Ingredients

  • 1500g icing sugar
  • 200g egg whites
  • 50g lemon juice 

Method

  1. Sieve icing sugar and combine with egg white and lemon juice by hand first before placing into mixer
  2. Paddle together on low speed for about 2min, then scrape sides and paddle well
  3. Continue mixing on low speed for approx. another 5min, until a creamy hard peak consistency is reached.
  4. For piping, loosen icing with some water
  5. To assemble gingerbread house use hard peak icing

‘If you decide to make the house yourself, we’d love to see what you’ve made. Please share your creations using #RoyalGingerbread.

Filmed using uplifting festive music, the gingerbread house tutorial mainly covers how to assemble the various elements of the house and then how to decorate it.

Recipes and a template for the sizes needed for the separate sections of the gingerbread house were made available on the Royal Family website. 

Once the dough has been made, cook it according to the baking times and then cut out the gingerbread shapes

Then decorate  the pieces with royal icing and assemble the house

Once the dough has been made, cook it according to the baking times and then decorate with royal icing

Baking times 

  • Set the oven fan to 165C
  • Leave larger pieces for roughly 18 minutes
  • Smaller pieces should only stay in for around 12 minutes 

In the video a number of information bubbles pop up on screen explaining the various steps to help construct the gingerbread house.

You can only watch in amazement as the Royal chefs intricately carve, decorate and build the impressive festive treat.

To finish the gingerbread house off, the chefs also created little gingerbread people, reindeer and even a star to hang above the house’s door. 

In order to make the decorate house, the chef’s said you first needed to make the gingerbread dough according to the recipe and then divide it into two blocks, kneading them together by hand and then flattening.

Once flat, they instruct you to cut out the gingerbread house according to the template and then bake them.

Once cooked decorate them with the Royal icing and then allow time for the icing to set.

Once this is done you can begin the assembly process as the house begins to take shape.

Finish the build off with any extra decorations you wish and then enjoy the gingerbread. 

When all the separate sections of the gingerbread house have been decorated you can begin the construction process

Melted boiled sweets have been used to create the windows

When all the separate sections of the gingerbread house have been decorated you can begin the construction process. Melted boiled sweets have been used to create the windows