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Construction plan
Image: Construction plan gingerbread house
You don't bake a witch's house in one day, you should reserve two long evenings for it. It is divided into 3 construction phases:
Step one and two are usually done on the first evening, the decorating should be saved for the next evening when you have a steady hand again.
You can find the full recipe here.
thx to Thomas from omoxx !
So let's get started. First we make the gingerbread:
Gingerbread
Ingredients
Preparation
Notes
Let the finished gingerbread cool down, possibly trimming the edges a bit if they have rounded too much. (But remember that a witch's house is inherently crooked and crooked, so don't be too perfectionist.)
While the walls cool down, we take care of the roof decoration. For this we bake the Wibele.
Shingles, "Wibele"
Wibele are a Swabian speciality and are made from sponge cake dough. It takes some patience to make this little pastry, but for our witch's house there is no alternative, you have to go through ;)
Ingredients
Instructions
TIP:
The best way to get the dough into the piping bag is to place it in a wheat beer glass and turn it inside out halfway. Then pour in the dough with a spatula, turn the piping bag back and carefully stroke downwards.
Now we can slowly start assembling. To glue together, we use frosting.
The icing
Ingredients
Glue the gingerbread walls together with the icing. You can use toothpicks to support the walls well until the frosting is firm. The roof gable and the corners of the houses are covered with Wiebele.
Spread the edge of the roof thickly with icing and carefully pull it down with a toothpick so that icicles form.
Source: Recipe at omoxx.com
The shell of the witch's house is ready, now it's time for the exterior design. I definitely have to use vanilla pretzels, but all other sweets are also allowed. The more colourful the offer, the brighter the children's eyes. A witch's house is kitschy !
Vanilla pretzels
Ingredients
In itself this is a simple shortcrust pastry, but to make it vanilla pretzels you have to consider the following. Usually it is said that you should not knead a shortbread too long if possible, so that the dough remains nice and crumbly. In this case, contrary to all other statements, the dough should be kneaded particularly vigorously and long. Then form 2-3 rolls of about 3-4 cm diameter from the dough and cut them into 1 cm thick slices. Use the heel of your hand to roll sausages about 8 cm long, which you place in the shape of a pretzel on a baking tray with baking paper.
The Vanill pretzels are baked at max 180°C (top – bottom heat) for 12 -15 minutes. It is essential that they remain bright.
Brush the warm pretzels with glaze and let them cool.
TIP:
To have a little more variety in the decoration, you can also roll out some dough and cut it out with as small shapes as possible. These cookies need a little shorter in the oven.
Spread the cookies with glaze and decorate with colorful sprinkles.
In addition to the pastries, the witch's house is decorated with all kinds of sweets. It's just important that the things aren't too big, because that doesn't look pretty. Basically, however, you can let your imagination run wild.
All the things are reattached with our all-icing glue. Sometimes it is very helpful to fix the things with toothpicks until the frosting has set. In the meantime, it looks like a hedgehog in acupuncture, but after about 1 hour you can remove the supports again.
Our witch's house gets the finishing touch with an extra thick layer of powdered sugar. That's the snow and it also conceals one or two blunders in the construction planning.
TIP:
The witch's house keeps well for up to 3-4 weeks. If the gingerbread has become too hard after this time, you can store it in a tin with a piece of apple for a few days, which will make it soft again (if the gingerbread house survives at all).
Source: Recipe at omoxx.com
thx to Thomas from omoxx