house design terms

welcome to how to cook that i am ann reardonand today i have a very exciting video for you, not only am i going to show you how tomake this christmas gingerbread house but you also have a chance to win my mixer. wellnot my one i've got a new one for you of course. i have actually got four to give away andi'll tell you later in this video how you can win those.and there is also two bonus videos for you this week one is the enchanted gingerbreadhouse and one is the dragons den you can watch both of those on the breville food thinkerschannel and i’ll link to that at the end of this one and in the description below.to make the gingerbread dough preheat your oven to 170c or 340fand for your ingredients you'll need brown

sugar, golden syrup or you can use treaclethere instead, butter, spices and your flour. for all of the ingredient quantities in gramsand ounces and cups head over to that breville food thinkers website, i’ll put a link tothat recipe in the description below this one.now we want to add all the ingredients except for your flour into the bowl of our electricmixer. now i always get asked what mixer do you have now i've actually got a brevillescraper mixer pro and i'll show you one of the things that i like best about this mixerin just one minute. add our syrup. so one of the things i like best about this mixeris this scraper paddle what it does is while it is mixing it scrapes along the side ofthe bowl so you don;t have to stop and scrape

it down. set your mixer onto folding and keepit going for 2 minutes and there is a handy little timer on the front that you can usethere. and then we want to add our flour into themix. and mix it on low speed until it makes a nice dough. now you don't want to put iton high speed because if you do that then it will add too much air to the dough andthen it is going to rise in the oven. for this house i am using a silicone moldand i’ll link to where you can get that from in the description below as well.take your dough and form a it into ball then cut it into quarters. take 3 of those quartersand cut them in half so you’ve got 6 even pieces.then take the remaining quarter, roll that

into a ball and cut that into four and thenadd one of each of those to four of your other existing pieces.use the two smaller bits of dough for the side walls and then the other dough for thelarger wall and the roof. now you are going to need to press the dough into the mold reallyfirmly to make sure it gets into those tiny window sections and all the cracks. be quiterough with it otherwise you'll get lots of air bubbles under the dough. then to get thetop flat tap it with the flat part of your hand and make sure the edges are straightso that the house sits nicely together once it is baked. then place them onto trays and put them inthe oven for 20 minutes. halfway through cooking

baking swap the trays from top to bottom sothey don't overcook. once you take it out of the oven let it coolfor about 5 minutes and then flip it out onto a wire rack and let it cool completely beforedecorating them. it will seem quite soft when you tip it out but it will get firmer as itcools. next we want to melt some compound white chocolate,select the melt chocolate function on the microwave. in the microwave, dial it up tothe right weight and press start. if you don’t have a breville microwave thenyou can just put it in a normal microwave. 30 sec stir, 20 sec stir, 10 sec stir andrepeat the 10 sec until its melted. tip some chocolate into the mold and spreadit out making sure you get it into those fine

window lines.and the then tap it on the bench to get rid of any air bubblesas we can. quickly add the gingerbread piece over the top and press it on gently.wipe of any excess chocolate that has oozed out onto to edge because we still want itto have straight edges so we can join it together properly.once that's set firmly just peel off the mold and you’re left with a beautiful lookingwall, repeat that with the others walls and then for the door we are going to make thatout of solid chocolate so just fill it up to the top tap it to get rid of any air bubblesand let it set. ok now to make our royal icing which is abit like the glue which holds the whole thing

together just add our packet mix and the amountof water it tells you which is 50ml into the bowl and then add it to your mixer and mixit on low to start with so it doesn't go everywhere and then we will turn it up to high afterthat. if you want to make it from scratch there is a recipe on the howtocookthat.netwebsite and i'll link you to that below. place the icing into a piping bag that's fittedwith a round shaped nozzle shake it down to the bottom of the bag and twist the top tostop it all coming back out the top when you squeeze it.to assemble your house lay the walls out flat like this on your board then pipe a line oficing along where the base of the walls are going to sit remembering to leave a gapwhere the door is.

then pipe a line of icing on each side ofthe side walls, not too close to the edge because we don’t want too much to spillout the front. lift up two walls and join them together,then add another wall and finally the last one. wriggle them around to make sure theyare all straight and joining properly and then them leave them for a few minutes forthe joins to firm up. to decorate the roof we are going to coverit in a clamshell pattern. start at one side at the top and then equally space semi-circlesgoing across that top edge. then starting from the edge of the next row pipe to thebottom of the previous semi-circle, loop down and then back up, down and up and repeat thatall the way across. repeat rows like that

until you get the bottom.now before it has a chance to dry place it into a container and pour hundreds and thousandsall over it, then tip it upside down to shake off the excess.take your mini m&m’s and use some royal icing to attach them in the spaces, you canjust use random colours or you can put them in patterns in rows.now before we put our roof on if you want to put something inside you need to do thatnow. that will do. now take some icing and we want to put it down the supports on oneside and across the top here and up the other side. then take one side of your roof andplace it on top like that. and while that's setting you may need to putsomething in place just to support it so that

it doesn't slide off.then take your icing and we need to pipe up like we did before and this time across thetop of the roof. up the side and across the other one.then grab your other roof and pop that into place. and just hold it for a minute untilit's ready to hold itself. roll out some red fondant really thinly andcut a strip about a cm wide. then add that to the front of your house to cover thosejoins where the two gingerbread house pieces are coming together. then cut some more fondantand use that to add just under the roof join to make it look neat. pipe dots of icing alongthe top, down the front edges and along the sides of your roof.then use some royal icing to put your door

into place.and now it's time to make our wreaths. roll out some green fondant into a snake. now youdon't want this to be too thick, make it thinner than you want your wreath to be. and thenjoin it to make a circle in the size you want it.now we want to roll some really, really thin snakes of green. if you have a fondant extruderthat will make this job much quicker but you can do it by hand. take the thin snakes ofgreen and layer them over your circle to make it look like a bushy wreath. you can maketwo of these, one for the front and one for the back of the house.to make your bow roll out some red fondant thinly, trim it to make a long, skinny rectangle.and then fold the two ends into the middle

and bend them so that they are coming downlike a ribbon would from a bow. cut out a triangle from each end. then rolla ball of red and add it to the middle. use a little bit of water to dampen the back,lift it up and add it to your wreath. then add some little silver decoration ballsonto it. now for the windows we want to make it looklike candy canes. so roll out a snake of white. and then using a pizza cutter cut one thickand two skinny strips of red and add them to the white. then roll it out until it isthe desired thickness that you want to go around your windows. and twist it as you rollto get that candy cane look. then use a little bit of water to dampen thefondant on one side of it and add it around

the top of your window and trim to size. repeatthat on all of your windows. to make the wooden window sills, take somebrown fondant and roll it out thickly and then cut that into a strip.use the tip of your knife to make a wooden pattern indent in the top of your fondantand then take slices the width of your windows and put them into place.for those little bushes out the front we are going to use mint leaves. just cut off thebase of them so that they will stand up. and make them different sizes so it looks morerealistic. now for our christmas tree. roll out a long snake of green fondant and thenroll it flat into a strip. use your pizza cutter to straighten it out and then wrapit around the base of the ice cream cone.

and as you come to the first join, use yourscissors to make little cuts in and some can be deeper than others, you can just give ita bit of variation there. and you can space some unevenly as well.continue to cut it and wrap it, overlapping each layer so that you can't see the cone.when you get near the top add some green over the point to cover it and then wrap the striparound to the top. squeeze it at the top to make a point and to make it stick together.then add some of your soft sugar pearls around just to decorate it, just gently press theminto the fondant. cover your cake board in royal icing and thenadd your mint leave bushes into place around the base of your house. then sprinkle thewhole thing with icing sugar to make it look

like snow. i like to use a tea infuser forthis because it's just the right size and it lets you shake a thin layer over it withoutgetting it everywhere. take some red and green smarties in a bag,crush them up using your roiling pin, just hit them well. define an area where you wantyour path to be and sprinkle on the broken smarties.add your tree into place and put a little bit of icing for snow on the top of that onetoo. so to win one of the breville scraper mixerpros and the digital scales from breville what you need to do is in the comments belowwrite what country you're from and why you would like to win. it's as easy as that andthen we'll choose a winner from that! now

i have one of these to give away in the us,one in canada, one in new zealand and one for australia.sorry to the rest of the world, i do love you, but that's just the countries that wecan send these to. so put below the country you are from and why you would like to win.subscribe to how to cook that for more crazy sweet creations.check out the other two gingerbread house videos here, click here to go to the howtocookthatchannel and here for the howtocookthat website. have a great week and i’ll see you on friday.

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: