DIY Gluten Free Gingerbread Houses

photo from Poor and Gluten Free

photos from Poor and Gluten Free

"Poor and Gluten Free has this amazing tutorial on making Gluten Free Ginger Bread Houses. They are so cute, even not decorated and she puts little votive candles in them. How cute is that!  To see the full tutorial, what frosting she uses, how she assembles them and more go here.

Recipe for Gluten Free Gingerbread House / Men

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I used this recipe from Melissa D'Arabian on foodnetwork.com for Gingerbread Men. I altered it slightly because I didn't have buckwheat flour and didn't want to use so much white rice flour - so I ended up using 1 cup brown rice flour, 1 cup white rice flour, 1/2 cup chickpea / garbanza flour, and 1 cup tapioca starch.

I let the larger pieces bake for 12 minutes to harden them. The smaller pieces (people, etc), I baked for 10 minutes. 

If you wanted to make it vegan, I suspect you could probably get away with subb'ing the 1 egg with a flax egg, and the butter with a dairy-free butter substitute.

One batch of the recipe made enough gingerbread for a small A-frame house, a larger, traditional style house, AND several gingerbread people and decorations. 

Free Gingerbread House Patterns

Nikki Wills on Tikkido.com has some fabulous posts on making gingerbread houses. I used both her small A Frame pattern and the Standard House Pattern. 

The above post photo is the standard house pattern, and the below is the A-frame (sorry the lighting was awful, I had to take some of the photos at night in my living room)

I just printed the pieces out and they were super easy to follow. 

She also has a post with some really useful tips and tricks for building gingerbread houses and I highly recommend you check them out. The one about dusting your gingerbread with flour before laying out the templates is REALLY important, or else your template will stick to the dough like mad!! 

 As you can see from my gingerbread house, I cut out the door and windows, and used the cutouts to make window shutters.

For the gingerbread people, I used a cheap Wilton cutout set that I picked up at Safeway. "-by: http://poorandglutenfree.blogspot.ca/2015/12/the-ultimate-diy-gluten-free.html