Shetland Croft Gingerbread House with Fair Isle Pattern Decoration
This Shetland Croft style gingerbread house is made using a (slightly adapted) Norwegian pepperkakehus recipe. It's a delicious, sturdy, easy to work with gingerbread recipe.
Combine 600 grams plain flour, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, 1 tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp ground ginger and 0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.
Melt 250 grams black treacle and 125 grams butter together and allow to cool slighty.
Whisk 2 medium free-range eggs and 250 grams caster sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the treacle and egg mixtures to the dry ingredients and work well with a wooden spoon until combined into a soft dough.
Pop the bowl of dough in the fridge for an hour or so to chill, and then divide into three even sized discs. Wrap in each disc in clingfilm and leave to chill in the fridge overnight.
Roll out each disc of dough on a sheet of good quality non-stick baking paper using a lightly floured rolling pin.
Cut out your gingerbread house pieces using the printable template included in this blog post, and remove the excess dough around each section.
Transfer the baking paper with the cut-out pieces (leaving the gingerbread untouched) to a baking sheet and bake in the centre of a preheated 200 C/ 180 C fan/ 390 F oven for 12 minutes.Leave to cool for a few minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
To make the icing, combine 225 grams icing sugar with 1 free-range egg white. Transfer to a piping bag and decorate each of the components of the gingerbread house as desired. You'll need two batches of icing if you're going to pipe designs all over it as I have. Colour your front door with red gel food colouring, in Shetland style, if desired.
Leave overnight to harden before assembling, starting with the four walls and finishing with the roof and chimney. Leave several hours of drying time in between assembling the walls and each of the roof pieces. You might need to prop up half of the roof with something and leave it to dry before adding the second half.
Finish off with the chimney, and sprinkle the roof join with some crushed up sugar cubes to resemble snow.