By Sally Elford
Choosing the best gingerbread icing for your house
You’ve spent hours choosing your sweets, piping amazing swirls and adding just the right amount of sprinkles to your house. You finally stick it together and step back to marvel at your masterpiece. But then disaster strikes. The roof starts sliding, the walls cave in and in a few painful seconds the house you’ve lovingly crafted is nothing more than a sticky colourful icing mess.
Sound familiar?
Well, you’re not alone.
Gingerbread house collapses are surprisingly common. Hell, even professional bakers like me suffer from! The number of times we’ve had slippages is annoyingly high but I you catch them in time you can generally fix them without wrecking your entire house.
But…there’s one key thing you should do if you want your house to stay put right off the bat – get the glue right.
Royal icing
It’s royal for a reason because royal icing is the king of glues for gingerbread houses. As my go-to choice for edible cement I can’t really fault it’s versatility and strength. Royal icing for the uninitiated is a mix of egg white and icing sugar. It sets tooth-breakingly hard, can be coloured a multitude of different shades from pale pink to midnight black and can even be flavoured with beautiful essences.
But there’s a catch if you want to make it really work for you.
The icing has to be the right consistency – this is ABSOLUTELY KEY if you want a house that stands up for weeks or even months on end. Too runny and you’re back to the age old problem of sliding panels, too stiff and you’ll get cramp in your hand long before you try and actually stick anything together.
Aim for toothpaste consistency and you can’t go far wrong. If you want to learn how to make royal icing check out my short video.
Hot/liquid sugar syrup
Melting together sugar and water and heating it for long enough will eventually create an extremely hot sticky sugar syrup that you can use to stick key pieces together. The upside, it sets quickly and hard. The downside, you have to keep it hot to use, it cools down quickly if you don’t and sets in the pan and it burns like f*ck if you accidentally spill it on your skin.
Still, it also gives a more traditional look to your house and sometimes cleaner edges if you don’t like a lot of white royal icing on show. Personally, I’m a big fan of the icing look but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Ganache
Ganache is a truly delicious substance and the basis for many truffles. Made from mixing chocolate and double cream together it comes in dark, milk and white and is generally totally flipping lush. It also sets firms eventually so is a good option for gluing together a gingerbread house, particularly if you’re a bona fide chocaholic like me.
But it’s not perfect and you need to handle it the right way to make it work for you.
As always consistency is key – too runny and your panels will slide off like firemen trying to climb a greasy pole, too stiff and your pieces simply won’t bond. Toothpaste consistency is good and you’ll probably need to support the pieces while they set. Unless you want to whack the whole thing in the fridge once you’ve glued it in which case it will firm up much faster.
Just remember, ganache is sensitive to temperature changes so if it’s sat next to a roaring fire while you roast your chestnuts, it’ll start to melt.
Click here for my guide to make the perfect ganache every time.
Buttercream
Last but not least, there’s buttercream. More normally associated with cakes it can also be used on gingerbread although I wouldn’t class it as the best gingerbread icing. However, it tastes delicious and, unlike royal icing, it won’t break your teeth when you try to eat it.
Use enough of this stuff and will hold your house together but any knock and it’ll quickly fall apart too. If you want a long-lasting house it’s probably best avoided.
But if you want a great buttercream recipe for your cakes click here.
