Gingerbread house essays

Gingerbread house essays Once you've decided on a pattern, the next step in creating a gingerbread house is making and baking the gingerbread dough. The dough recipe below will make two or three small houses, but if you only want to make one, you can use the rest for cookies. Heres what you need: Optional ingredients: a dash of cardamom, allspice or cloves Put the molasses, shortening and sugar into a pot and set it on the stove over medium heat. You want to cook these wet ingredients until they are well blended, for approximately 10-15 minutes. Stir them occasionally. While this is cooking, work on your dry ingredients. Put 4 cups of flour in a bowl. Youll have a fifth cup of flour left over for later use. Now its time to add the cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. You can also add a little cardamom, allspice or cloves if you want. Finally, add the baking soda. Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease your cookie sheet and kneading surface. Most recipes will tell you to lightly flour your kneading surface, but lightly greasing it tends to be more effective in keeping your dough from sticking. You are now ready to mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients. Use a spoon to mix it until you have a nice, round ball of gingerbread dough. Youll have to start using your hands when it gets too thick to stir. Now youre going to use your fifth cup of flour not all of it, just a little bit at a time. Too much flour will make your dough too crumbly. Divide the dough into two or three sections and roll a section on the greased surface. Get the dough down to about 1/8 inch thick. Cover both sides of each pattern piece with shortening and ...