Every year, Collin College’s Culinary Department offers a gingerbread house workshop for students, faculty and staff to learn the basics of cookie-based construction techniques. And Chef Jill McCord is glad to share some tips for making your own gingerbread creation with family and friends.
The workshop is a precursor to the annual gingerbread house competition in the Frisco Campus Library. This year’s home building materials were cut with cookie cutters created in the Frisco Campus’s Makerspace 3D printer.
Gingerbread creations from the workshop, as well as homemade entries and themed homes from culinary students, will be on display through Dec. 4 in the library.
If you plan on making a gingerbread home this year, Chef McCord has a few helpful tips for you.
- Have a game plan. It can get overwhelming if you try to complete things in one day. Bake one day and assemble the next.
- If you are making and baking your own gingerbread, make sure to bake the pieces a little longer than you would for a cookie. You want it to be on the crispier side.
- Once baked, let it cool and then pipe things like windows and doors on the house before you build it.
- Have your royal icing at a fairly stiff consistency. If it is too runny, it may not keep the house together.
- Use canned food to support the pieces while the royal icing is drying.
- Use supports in the middle of the house, the roofs can get heavy!
- Sugar cones make great pine trees, just cover with green royal icing.
- Keep your royal icing covered with a wet paper towel if you don’t have it in a bag.
- Melt hard candies and then pour into window spaces in cooked gingerbread to make it look like glass.
- Have fun and realize that nobody knows what your house is supposed to look like. If it isn’t perfect, it’s ok, it may look better than the house you did last year.