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What is a Gingerbread House Mold?

Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen

A gingerbread house mold can be a complicated thing, but once you get one you like, you may never go back to gingerbread kits. While the kits are lovely and decorative, the gingerbread is not terrific in taste. If you’d like to snack on your house, as Hansel and Gretel did to the witch’s home in the fairytale, using homemade gingerbread provides a much more satisfying eating experience.

In simplest form, the gingerbread house mold is a cast-iron, cast-aluminum, or non-stick aluminum baking pan that usually features designs on both sides of the mold. These designs can be quite elaborate, and you can buy not just simple houses, but also log cabins, barns, and other varieties of edible architecture. You fill the designed parts of the pan on one side and bake, and then repeat using the other side of the pan. Cost varies significantly, and you can expect to pay anywhere from $20 US Dollars (USD) to about $50 USD depending upon the make and how elaborate the designs are on the mold. Size can vary too, and will depend upon the number of pieces needed to construct your gingerbread house.

Cookie cutters can be used to mold decorations for gingerbread houses.
Cookie cutters can be used to mold decorations for gingerbread houses.

Those learned in the art of making houses from gingerbread suggest that one of the prime mistakes people make when using a gingerbread house mold is removing the gingerbread from the pan before it is completely cool. People can be impatient to bake the other side of the pan’s designs. Yet, premature removal of one side can cause the gingerbread to stick to the mold, or to break as it is taken out of the pan. You should always allow the gingerbread to cool completely before attempting to take it out of the pan. It can help to either grease or use nonstick cooking spray on the gingerbread house mold too. If you’re in a hurry, buy two pans that feature the same design, and bake them on opposite sides.

Another mistake made by people assembling these houses is not allowing the pieces of the gingerbread house mold to rest for at least a day prior to assembling the house. You will inevitably have an architectural nightmare on your hands if your “walls” are not sufficiently stiff, something accomplished by letting the gingerbread cure for a day. Again, if you’re going to the trouble of using a gingerbread house mold and making a house from scratch, don’t ruin the process by hurrying.

If you have little Hansels and Gretels at home who might like to nibble on your house, you should use royal icing made of pasteurized egg whites. This way children or adults can eat the house that you built safely. Honestly, it can be difficult to resist a delectable looking house. Even if the house is for decoration only, it may eventually lose some of its trimmings.

If you’re looking for a really elaborate gingerbread house mold, the best place to search is the Internet. You’ll find the greatest diversity of molds online, often with accompanying plastic molds to make chocolate figures for a gingerbread garden, moat, or yard. As you learn to be a cookie construction worker, start with a simpler mold before working your way up to castles or villas.

Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen

Tricia has a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and has been a frequent WiseGEEK contributor for many years. She is especially passionate about reading and writing, although her other interests include medicine, art, film, history, politics, ethics, and religion. Tricia lives in Northern California and is currently working on her first novel.

Learn more...
Tricia Christensen
Tricia Christensen

Tricia has a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and has been a frequent WiseGEEK contributor for many years. She is especially passionate about reading and writing, although her other interests include medicine, art, film, history, politics, ethics, and religion. Tricia lives in Northern California and is currently working on her first novel.

Learn more...

Discussion Comments

SteamLouis

What is the best type of material for a gingerbread house mold, silicone? I know that those don't stick but are they sturdy? Do I need to use a sheet pan under the mold?

fify

@SarahGen-- You should bake the gingerbread people separately or just not bake them. Also, you could make the gingerbread people thicker so that it takes longer for them to bake.

Generally, if you fill in a gingerbread house baking mold too much, the house will come out very thick and more like a cake rather than a cookie. So the mold should only be filled a little bit, especially if the dough is going to rise. It takes much longer for thick gingerbread to harden enough to make a house.

I think you could make the gingerbread people thicker since they are separate from the house. But they still need to wait at least overnight to harden.

SarahGen

I bought a very nice, detailed gingerbread house mold last week. I used it for the first time yesterday. The gingerbread house walls came out perfect. They did not break while removing. The only problem is that there are also gingerbread people in the mold separate from the house walls. Since they are small, they bake very quickly. By the time the walls were baked, my gingerbread people burned.

I don't know if there is any way to avoid this. If I bake them at the same time, either the house will be under-baked or the people will be over-baked.

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    • Cookie cutters can be used to mold decorations for gingerbread houses.
      By: 0635925410
      Cookie cutters can be used to mold decorations for gingerbread houses.