This haunted house is definitely edible and taste wonderful as I use my go to recipe. However, since this is for table decoration only, I did not cover my board with aluminum foil/fondant/cake foil. If you’d like to devour your gingerbread house in the end, do cover your board so the cookies won’t touch the board 🙂

Ingredients

6 c flour
6 tbsp bpowder
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp cloves
2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cardamom
a pinch of salt
3/4 c honey
1 3/4 c sugar
1/4 c butter
juice and grated peel of 1 lemon
1 egg and 1 yolk

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine flour, bpowder, spices and salt
In a pot, bring honey, sugar and butter to a boil over high heat, stirring with wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved and butter melted, remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and peel. Cool to room temperature
Once cool, beat in 3 c of flour mixture until blended. Beat in egg and yolk, then beat in remaining flour mixture
Flour hands and knead dough until smooth and pliable but still slightly sticky. If its too moist, beat in more flour, a tbsp at a time
Roll flat the dough to 1/2 inch thick, yes it is thick but it makes it stronger especially after the house has dried for a week.
Cut with your template or cookie cutter and place on a greased and lined with parchment paper sheet. You need to also grease and flour the the parchment paper.
Bake at preheated 325 F for 40 minutes
Once cookies are cool, attach and decorate with royal icing and candies/fondant/modelling chocolate

Another method that can be done with this recipe, is that once you roll flat your dough, do not cut it yet, but lay it flat on the baking sheet, bake, and take out from oven. Cool in pan for 5 minutes then cut out cookie shapes, carefully as when cookie still warm (freshly baked), it is fragile.

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