Classic Gingerbread House Cookie Mix Recipe – Includes Template

_{The BEST recipe for gingerbread house cookies. My family has been using it for years! Easy to make, comes with Royal Icing Recipe & Template.}

Classic Gingerbread House Cookie Mix Recipe

Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 11 Minutes Total Time: 26 Minutes Servings: 4 Houses or 36 Cookies

Tis The Season…If you are planning to bake up a batch of gingerbread cookies over the holidays, I have the perfect recipe for you or if you are ready to try your hand at making your own gingerbread house.

Building a Classic Gingerbread House is a holiday tradition in our home. I have to admit that I have in the past purchased a store-bought kit due to lack of time. The kit was awful. Sure, the kids had fun making their own houses, but in reality, it tasted like cardboard and the icing was incredibly difficult to handle.

Over the years, I have gained many old recipe books from my grandmother.  Sometimes those old-time recipes are actually really good. As I was flipping through a cookbook called “Cookies” I stumbled upon the following recipe. There is no way to give full disclosure or link to the original recipe.

Can you believe that?  The published date was 1989.  YEP!!!  So I was 11 years old when this book came out. One of my favorite traditions is creating gingerbread houses while drinking this Traditional Wassail Cider Drink Recipe. Traditions are so fun and tasty.

Please note: As you scroll through this post you will notice not one, but two recipes. The first is for the gingerbread house cookie and the second is for a classic royal icing. And both are available for printing. 

Gingerbread House Printable Template

If you decide you want to create a gingerbread house instead of cookies, I have provided a free template that you can print. This Classic Gingerbread House Cookie Mix will make 4 smaller houses with little to none leftovers.

Just keep that in mind as you are creating and cutting out your shapes. Get your Classic Gingerbread House template. You can Print that template Here!  Now let’s make a batch.

How to Make Your Classic Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Ingredients Needed

• 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp ginger
• ¼ tsp coriander
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ cup unsalted butter
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup Maple Syrup or Molasses
• ½ tsp salt
  2 tsp grated orange rind

Making Your Gingerbread Cookie Dough

I love this gingerbread cookie recipe because it’s SO easy to make! It doesn’t require the dough to be chilled (like most recipes), but you can make and chill it if you like and put it aside until you are ready to bake.

First, in a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and spices.

Then, in a medium bowl cream butter and sugar together, add egg, molasses, salt, and orange rind. Mix well. Then combine both the dry ingredients into the wet ingredient mixture.  

Add one cup of the dry mixture at a time to the wet ingredients. Your dough should look crumbly (Like the picture below).

Cookie Dough Crumbles

Take your crumbly dough mixture and mold it into a round dough ball. Now you are ready to roll out your dough. On a floured surfaced roll-out Gingerbread Cookie dough to roughly about 1/4 inch thickness.

If you choose to chill your dough; Place the gingerbread cookie dough into an airtight container and chill for at least 1 hour or overnight. You can wrap it in plastic wrap if you will be chilling it for longer, to ensure it won’t dry out. 

Once, your dough is rolled out nicely, cut out shapes using a sharp knife, pizza cutter, or fondant knife (which is what I used). I then used a fork to lift up the edges before placing the cookies on my ungreased baking sheet.

NOTE: If your dough is too soft to remove from the cookie sheet, chill the dough first.

Bake for 8 – 11 minutes at 350 degrees or until edges of Gingerbread House Cookie shapes are browned. At this point, your house should smell just amazing. Once your cookies are baked, transfer immediately to on a cooling rack.

As you are baking your cookies, you can now start on the next recipe… Royal Icing.

Classic Gingerbread House Cookie Mix Recipe – Icing below

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Making Royal Icing Frosting

Once cooled, I make a simple royal icing to decorate with. You can definitely use regular sugar cookie frosting if you choose to simply make cookies. If you decide to make a gingerbread house, this is the glue that will stick your sides together as well as your icing for decorating.

Royal icing comes together fast and dries hard, so you can stack the cookies. I make mine using meringue powder, which you can find at most craft stores or on Amazon.

To make royal icing you need:

• Powdered Sugar – be sure not to pack it (spoon it into the measuring cup)
• Meringue Powder – powdered egg whites; this is why the icing hardens
• Vanilla Extract – for flavoring (use any extract you like)
• Water – the amount depends on how thick you want your icing

How to make royal icing

To begin first, using a large bowl with an attached mixing stand, add confectioners’ sugar and meringue powder. Mix on low speed until combined. Add water. Just a quick note here; it is very important to make sure that you have no grease on any of your mixing tools or bowls. The residual grease will cause this royal icing not to fluff up.

Place a moist towel over the stand mixer to prevent icing from drying out. A trick I learned when taking a college-level baking class for fun.

Mix on low speed for 7 – 10 minutes. The icing is finished when the icing loses its sheen and becomes stiff. Use immediately or place in an airtight container for use later. It can be stored for up to two weeks.

How to use Royal Icing

To apply your royal icing “glue” you can simply use a food storage bag, fill it with icing, and cut the tip off, or use a piping bag.

For the below Gingerbread house, I used Wilton tip #21 with a Wilton piping bag.   The royal icing and gingerbread house parts will need a gentle hand when placed together. Once set, you can move your house around with ease.

Decorating your Gingerbread House

Now is when the creative fun begins. I pulled out my kids’ leftover Halloween candy, because “HEY” we still have lots of candy.  I wrote a great post; Ways to Use Your Leftover Halloween Candy, you may want to check it out.

 A few of my favorite tips are to re-gift that candy as stocking stuffers, save it for building your Gingerbread Houses, and (well) you will have to read the rest of the article to find out more. 

Don’t you just love the skulls and bones? HA!

Simple Royal Icing for Gingerbread House Cookie Recipe

Did You Enjoy Making This Recipe? Please rate this recipe with or leave a comment. It helps other wonderful people connect with our recipes.

If you made this Gingerbread House Cookie Dough recipe featured on Inspiring Savings, we would love to hear all about it. Tell us about your experience by leaving us a comment.

Other Classic Cookie Recipes

Homemade Almond Joy Shortbread Cookies

Salty Sweet Oatmeal Pretzel Cookies

Easy No Bake Peppermint Dipped Cookies

Eating out is easy, and it usually tastes delicious, but it’s expensive. Making this meal at home will save you money. Add this recipe to your weekly meal plan.