Cadbury Dairy Milk Christmas Chocolate House Kit 840g

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However, we thought there wasn't quite enough icing to really go to town on the decoration. We'd recommend keeping the pre-made icing for another baking day and making a big batch of your own to ensure you don't run out. Our verdict:Ideal if you're not keen on gingerbread, but it's messy to build and will likely end up covered in fingerprints. Four expert tips to help you build your gingerbread house 1) Plan what you want to do before you start

Plan to do the bulk of your decoration the day after you cut and bake the house—because at that point, you won’t care enough to use more than just icing. We found that a dramatic lighting filter really improved the gingerbread house’s look. Sara Chodosh Cut a door out of one end panel (as marked on the template); cut a window out of both end panels using the small star cutter. Cut two of each template out of cardboard. Remove the dough from the fridge and remove the top layer of baking paper from each piece. Lay the cardboard templates on top and cut out them all out using a pizza cutter or sharp knife. As we found with John Lewis' pre-made icing, the icing in this kit was runny and didn't hold the pieces together very securely. However, as you start to run low the tube takes a lot of squeezing. Our hands were cramping up towards the end.Our verdict:We had a bit of a disaster building this gingerbread campervan, and were disappointed with the kit overall. These changes make it easier for bakers to cut shapes out of the dough without worrying that the components will grow into big, fluffy versions of themselves when they bake. If you’re not crazy about the taste, just remind yourself that gingerbread houses aren’t really for eating: They’re for display—and for showing off your skills to your holiday guests. Draft the blueprint Make the gingerbread. Heat the sugar, golden syrup and orange juice in a large pan over a low heat, until all the sugar crystals have melted (about 5 minutes). Remove from the heat and stir in the butter until melted. Sift the flour, ginger and salt into the wet ingredients, then stir to combine. Bring the mixture together with your hands and knead it to a dough. It saves you a task if your gingerbread house kit comes with icing included, but you'll need to decide if the amount that's included is enough for what you plan to do. Contains: Two Cadbury Dairy Milk Bars, Two Cadbury Dairy Milk Winter Wonderland Editions, Two Cadbury Dairy Milk Winter Gingerbread Editions, Two Cadbury White Buttons Bags, One Cadbury Flake Treatsize.

Once hardened, use melted pink chocolate to assemble walls of the house. To help support the sides while the chocolate is hardening, use a can or bottle to hold walls upright.

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Looking past our amateur decorating job we were still disappointed with how this house looks. The icing pen colours and sweets looked different to how they appeared on the box - especially the orange icing - and the gingerbread in the box was much darker. Spread the remaining portion of icing (in the bowl) over the cake board around the house, including covering the fairy-light lead, if using. Snap the whole cut-out windows into small pieces and press these into the iced board to create a crazy-paved path. Once you’ve plotted out your shapes, whip up the dough (careful, this stuff is seriously stiff). Then roll it out on a piece of parchment paper to make it easier to transfer to the baking sheet. Place the raw dough on the sheet and lay out your guides on top. We chose a pretty basic gingerbread house shape, but added two bonus triangles to act as structural supports. Sara Chodosh

Here’s the real problem with gingerbread house construction. Everyone wants to slap together a house and glue the pieces in place with the snow-white confection called royal icing, but that edible cement simply takes too long to dry. The traits that make it great for decoration—it’s flimsy and crumbly—do not work so well for holding walls together. It looks ornate and doesn't appear simplistic at all, with lovely textures and patterns on the gingerbread pieces and colourful, varied decorations included. The cooled white chocolate ganache should be moldable. If it is not, you can heat it gently and add more cream (sometimes, it just needs to be a little warm). Mold the white chocolate ganache into a cone (about 2 inches wide at the base and 3 inches tall). Set on a small piece of parchment paper. Press SweeTARTS Mini Chewy candies into the ganache to form the base of the tree. Refrigerate until hardened. Peel away the parchment from the bottom. Place on an unwrapped Butterfinger peanut butter cup mini. Large Butterfinger peanut butter cup minis treeBake the large gingerbread pieces for 15 minutes, then pop 2–3 red boiled sweets into each square window pane and 1 yellow boiled sweet into each round window and return to the oven. Bake for a further 3–5 minutes, or until the gingerbread is firm and golden and the sweets have melted and filled the panes, but are not bubbling. Remove from the oven and leave on the baking sheets until cold. If the gingerbread has spread during baking, either trim around the pieces with a sharp knife while still hot or allow to cool completely, then gently shave the uneven edges with a fine grater. There's no piping bag included in this kit either, so we had to use butter knives when attempting to decorate it. Decorate one roof piece: use a knife to spread icing all over the roof, then cover with chocolate buttons. Start from the bottom, then add the buttons in rows that just overlap to look like tiles. Decorate the chimney pieces with icing and hundreds-and-thousands. Wait until the icing is completely dry. Use remaining ingredients to make a second batch of caramel in a large flat pan. Watch this VERY carefully because the layer is thin and when it starts changing color, it can change fast. When you reach the light caramel color, turn off the heat and let the heat from the pan finish the cooking.

There were a few issues with this kit. We found the icing runny and difficult to use when constructing this house. There are plastic clips included for holding the base in place, but the wall pieces still leant inwards and we'd put that down to the weak cement.Your other option is something called sturdy royal icing, which works either in addition to the white chocolate or instead of it. To whip up normal royal icing, you can just mix powdered sugar with water or lemon juice, or add egg whites to the mix. To make the sturdy variety, you only use egg whites and powdered sugar (plus maybe a few drops of water to thin it enough to push through a piping bag). USING a knife, cut 6 panels as per the template: 2 x roof, 2 x sides, 2 x ends and place on lightly greased baking trays. Gingerbread house building is an exciting activity, and it can be all too tempting to rip open the box and get to building straight away. Preheat the oven to 190°C, fan 170°C, gas 5. Use a Christmas tree cutter to cut biscuits out of the excess dough – you only need 4 for the house but there'll be enough dough to make at least 30 trees altogether. Put the trees on a separate baking sheet to the house pieces; chill for 30 minutes. Bake the house pieces, in batches, for about 18-20 minutes. Bake the tree biscuits for 10 minutes.