Glutten Free Gingerbread House: Part 1 Baking

My dad and I make a Christmas project ever year.  It usually involves cake or cookies.  This year we decided to make a gingerbread house.  This is complicated by the fact that my father is now on a gluten free diet.  Baking challenge accepted!

We started by picking a recipe.  If you've ever cooked gluten free you know that it can be difficult.  The ingredients are often expensive and recipes often require a huge amount of ingredients.  In the end I settled on one that we already had most of the ingredients for.  I used a recipe found at Jenn Cuisines.  The author of the recipe also used it to make a gingerbread house, which I thought was a good sign.  I should warn you that my batch turned out a bit dry and I only added 1.5 cups of millet flour.  I should also mention that the cookies are not very sweet.  If I make this again I'll add a bit more sugar.  In the end we had enough for the house, but not much else.

Half the dough ready to be rolled out!

The next stage is picking a pattern.  I looked all over at free patterns.  We flirted with the idea of designing our own, but as this is our first time decided to use something we were pretty sure would work (fingers crossed).  In the end we went with the Swedish gingerbread house design found at Marthastewart dot com.  It was the right amount of classic and interesting . . . and the patten was free!

Patterns ready to be cut!

We made up the dough and cut out all the bits!  It was rather stressful due to the dryness of the dough.  However, we ended up with what appears to be very sturdy house pieces.  Construction has not yet began due to time constraints, but you'll get a blog as soon as possible!

Unbaked with the windows being popped out . . .

First sheet out of the oven . . .

The front!

Side of the house

Most of the parts baked and ready to go!

Ikkin-bot baker extraordinaire!

So far the project has been great.  I recommend family christmas projects.  It is a great way to relax and make sure you actually see people at the holidays instead of just running around stressed out.