Basic technique for drawing a gingerbread house

Adding details to your house can take it to the next level and make you a pro in no time. Try using a spatula or spoon to ice the board around the house. For a perfect snowy wintery scene, dust your board with sprinkles. You can create some easy ombre trees for the yard, too: Simply tint the icing in a variety of shades of green and use star tips like Wilton tips 199, 21, and 1M to pipe.

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Tips from the chefs:

• Have a picture or drawing of a “house” that you want to work from.
• If you are making your own gingerbread house, make sure the structural part of the house is baked before decorating.
• If you don’t have a gingerbread house mold, you can use cardboard to build a template.
• Use a microplane on the edges of the baked gingerbread house to ensure straight edges.
• Gelatin sheets work well for windows. Attach it to the house with royal icing.
• Royal icing is made of egg whites and powdered sugar. Make sure to sift the powdered sugar 3-4 times to get the lumps out.
• When you use royal icing to attach the gingerbread house sides together, make sure it’s a thicker consistency.
• When gluing the roof of your gingerbread house, make sure to use extra royal icing and hold the roof in place until secure. Let sit overnight.
• To create small stones, build it out of gingerbread and bake it at a low temperature to dry it out.
• To decorate the roof, you can use cereal, crackers, fondant.
• Fondant, a sugar icing, can be placed in the time machine, kneaded, and rolled out to loosen it up.
• If you drape fondant on the gingerbread house, the thinner the better.
• Royal icing can be used to look like snow or icicles as well as attaching decorative elements like candy.
  To make icicles, use a small pastry bag tip.
• Have fun!

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MAKE A BIRD MENORAH

Tips from Susan Garson:

• For beginners, a low-fire earthenware clay is very easy to work with.
• When building the base of the menorah, make sure the walls don’t get too thin.
• The base of the menorah should dry out a bit before placing the bird on it.
• Make sure the body of the bird is a bit thicker so the candle holes fit.
• Scratch, score, and add some slip when attaching pieces of clay to each other.
• When finished building the bird menorah, cover it with plastic and let it dry for about a week.
• Make sure to bisque fire your bird menorah before painting it.
• A turntable is very useful when building and painting your menorah.
• Slip can be made from a little bit of clay and water. Mix it together.
• Supplies can be found at a craft or hobby store.

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Ceramic artist Susan Garson paints a bird menorah.

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Ceramic artist Susan Garson talks about the materials needed to build a bird menorah

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CREATE A LUMINARIA

Decorate the holidays with luminarias

To create your pattern, you will need to create a symmetrical design. Start with a piece of paper and fold it lengthwise, then again in half. Draw a curve to signify the edge of the snowflake and draw your pattern.

Cut out the pattern and open it up to reveal a snowflake. Place a dark piece of paper behind your pattern and xerox it.

To create a luminaria, you will need:

• pastry bags
• scissors
• hole punch

Cut your pattern in half lengthwise. Fold your pastry bag in half lengthwise. Attach your pattern to your pastry bag with paper clips. Kathleen Trenchard suggests cutting your pattern starting with the section on the fold. Then work your way out.

When you have finished cutting your pattern, remove the pattern and unfold and open your pastry bag. Fill it with sand and a tea candle, and you have a luminaria.

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Set Aside Plenty of Time and Space

According to Krupa, the top tip for gingerbread house decorating is to take your time with the prep work. Clear a large portion of your countertop or kitchen table to lay out your cookie pieces, icing, piping bags and tips, candy melts, gumdrops, sprinkles, and so on. Clutter will cause stress and spillage. To truly make your life easy, use a turntable.

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Trim Your Edges Until They’re Even

“Make sure all your pieces are even and flat,” says Krupa. “Personally, I like to put the pieces back to back and shave the edges with a sharp paring knife or a micro planer to make sure they are even.” When you eventually seal them together with icing, the sides of each piece will be perfectly flush with one another. This will help make the gluing process (literally) seamless.

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Decorate Before You Build (Seriously)

Here’s a smart tip you might not have considered: Decorate your house before you assemble it. According to Krupa, starting with the embellishment sets you up for success. “It’s a lot easier for me to decorate the house pieces while they are flat,” she says. “You can rotate the pieces so you can get to every spot and nothing will get in your way.”

When you’re done decorating, let your designs set for 30 to 60 minutes before you assemble. Once you’ve put the house together, cover your seams and add your finishing touches.

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Equipment

1. For baking the dough, you’ll need a scale to weigh ingredients, a rolling pin, a ruler, and parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Wirecutter, a product recommendations website owned by The New York Times Company, has a guide to the best kitchen scales.
2. Use a sharp chef’s knife or a serrated knife to cut the gingerbread. Whichever you choose, you’ll want a small knife and a large one, along with a ruler and a 2-inch round cookie cutter. If making a stained-glass window, you’ll need electric tealights and hard candies, in red, yellow or green.
3. For assembling the house, a sturdy board, like a wood or canvas painting panel, or an inexpensive cutting board, about 18- or 20-inch square, is key. Mugs, jars and cans will also help prop up the walls as they dry.
4. For decorating, you’ll need thick, sealable one-gallon plastic bags to use as pastry bags. An offset spatula will allow you to scrape and smooth the icing.

Recipe from Bill Yosses
Adapted by Julia Moskin

• Yield Gingerbread for 1 9-by-9-inch house
• Time 2 hours, plus resting

Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Orange and lemon zests make this recipe, from Bill Yosses, the former White House pastry chef, especially delicious, if you plan on eating your gingerbread house (and you can, even weeks after baking). But feel free to leave them out. We strongly recommend using a scale here. It will make it much easier to accurately measure the ingredients and to evenly divide the dough. This recipe, for the house’s building blocks, is large, and it makes enough for the project featured in our How to Make a Gingerbread House guide. But as the instructions state, you’ll want to make it in two batches, since it’s too big for the average stand mixer. Note that you’ll want to bake your gingerbread at least a few days before assembling the house, to give the slabs time to harden, and set aside a few hours for decoration and assembly. —Julia Moskin

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Ingredients

• 1 pound/454 grams unsalted butter (4 sticks), at cool room temperature
• 2 ½ cups plus 3 tablespoons/595 grams dark brown sugar
• 12 ¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons/1,648 grams all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 2 heaping tablespoons/15 grams ground ginger
• 2 heaping tablespoons/15 grams ground cinnamon
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups molasses
• Zest of 2 lemons (optional)
• Zest of 2 oranges (optional)

Preparation

1. Make half of the batch: In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together half the butter and half the sugar for 5 minutes, until fluffy. Scrape down sides.
2. Meanwhile, sift together the dry ingredients — the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt — and set aside half.
3. With mixer running at low speed, add two eggs, one at a time. Mix in 1 cup molasses. Scrape down bowl.
4. In 3 batches, add half the dry ingredients, mixing just to combine. To prevent any flour from flying out, make sure the mixer is off when adding each batch, and drape a towel over it when mixing. Mix in zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange.
5. Pull dough out of mixer, and wrap in plastic wrap, or transfer to a resealable plastic bag. Repeat Steps 1 to 5 to make the remaining dough. Refrigerate overnight.
6. When ready to bake, heat the oven to 350 degrees.
7. Roll out dough: For each square, weigh out about 20 ounces of dough. The goal is to end up with five 9-inch squares, so you’ll roll them out a bit larger, bake them and trim off the edges.
8. Lightly dust a large piece of parchment paper with flour. Place the chilled dough on top. Roll side to side and up and down to make a rough square shape. While you roll, make frequent quarter-turns so that the dough remains even.
9. Roll until dough is about 10 by 10 inches and a generous 1/4-inch thick. Transfer to a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough. (Any dough left after the squares have been prepared can be rolled out 1/4-inch thick and used for cookies.) In the oven, the slab will rise to about 3/8- or 1/2-inch thickness, which will make the house extra sturdy.
10. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until even and firmly set. Place pans on racks to cool. To prevent bending and cracking, carefully transfer to racks by lifting parchment paper. When completely cool, stack the slabs, still on parchment, and set aside to dry out at room temperature for 3 to 7 days. (When ready to assemble, see How to Make a Gingerbread House guide for full instructions.)