Santa's Special delivery

'Tis that time of year again, and today is about making Gingerbread Houses. This is something of a tradition for my fiancé Katie, and it's becoming something I look forward to helping with each Christmas - more-so now that we've been able to source pure icing sugar. That's the suspicious looking delivery in the photo, pure uncut icing sugar. The issue with regular icing sugar is that it'd got 5% starch (tapioca usually), which is to keep the icing soft. This can be good for biscuits and cakes but for 'gluing' together gingerbread  houses it's just not strong enough.

The pure icing sugar is mixed with egg white and lemon juice to make a paste which will dry hastily when exposed to air. Use sandwich bags to keep the icing air-tight until you're ready to construct.

Ginger Bread

200g of butter
100g of Dark Brown sugar
125ml of Golden syrup or Molasses

450g of Self raising Flour
1tsp of ground ginger
1tsp of ground cinnamon
half tsp of ground cloves

Cream butter and brown sugar until smooth and light them thoroughly mix through the Golden syrup. A good cake mixer will make light work of this. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl and add to the wet mixure in thirds, mixing thoroughly. You will probably have to mix the last third of the dry ingredients by hand. Add a few tablespoons of water if needed Wrap dough in glad wrap and refrigerate for 90 mins. Cut into the shapes for your GB House design and bake for 10 -15 mins at 180c, section sizes will dictate you cooking times. Cool well on a rack before assembling.

I'll post some photo's of our completed houses later this week.