Bring some Christmas magic to your home with this classic Vegan Gingerbread House, made from gingerbread cookies and vegan aquafaba royal icing.
Building a vegan gingerbread house is not the easiest task, yet it is incredibly rewarding. First, you make the dough and prepare the pattern pieces. Then, bake and assemble the house before finally decorating it. For me, this process took two days to finish. However, the real joy is in creating a gingerbread house from scratch and adding personal touches. From rolling out the dough to decorating with candies, every step is rewarding.
Moreover, this festive project fills your home with the warm, spicy aroma of gingerbread. Thus, it makes for a wonderful holiday activity for friends and family. Whether you’re an experienced baker or a novice, building a gingerbread house is a fun and festive way to celebrate the season.
This recipe makes enough dough for the entire gingerbread house and all the decorative pieces, including different types of trees in my case.
Day 1: First, prepare all the pattern pieces you’ll need for the house and decorations. Then, make the dough, roll it out, and bake the pieces. Once they have cooled, decorate the front and side pieces, the Christmas trees, and the rooftop. Let everything dry overnight to set.
Day 2: Finally, assemble the house using your decorated pieces. Use royal icing to glue the pieces together and finish adding any final touches to your decorations. The key is to be patient and have fun with it!
You also need:
- Vegan Food Coloring (Amazon has a great selection)
- Vegan candies for the stained glass windows
- Gingerbread House Template (you can find so many different styles online)
- I used about 3 servings of the vegan royal icing to decorate the whole house.
Vegan Gingerbread House
Ingredients
- 500 g all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon each baking powder & salt
- 1 teaspoon each ground ginger & ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon each ground nutmeg & cloves
- 120 g sunflower oil
- 300 g sugar
- 1/2 cup 130g molasses
- 1/2 cup soy milk
- For the vegan royal icing 1 serving
- 3 tablespoons of aquafaba
- 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 2 cups icing sugar
Instructions
- In a very large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and all the spices.
- In another bowl whisk together oil and sugar for about 3 minutes. Add molasses, soy milk and mix well.
- Gradually add the flour mix to the wet ingredients. Mix until a stiff dough is formed.
- Flatten the dough into a two disks, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour or up to 3 days in advance. If you chill longer than an hour you may want to let it sit for 10 minutes to warm up a bit before proceeding.
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease your cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
- On a lightly floured surface or on a sheet of parchment paper roll the dough out to a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Cut out your shapes with a pizza cutter and use a thin spatula to gently place on cookie sheets. Chill the in the fridge for 15 minutes before baking for about 10 minutes.
- Vegan Royal Icing:
- For the icing beat the chickpea brine with a hand mixer until fluffy, gradually add the icing sugar until you have a thick and glossy vegan royal icing.
DID YOU MAKE THIS RECIPE? I HOPE YOU LOVE IT.
Please let me know how it turned out! Leave a comment below and share a picture on Instagram with the hashtag #littleswissbaker.
That looks amazing! :O
Thank you Sandra
how do you whip up only 3 tbsp of aquafaba with an electric mixer? it seems like so small an amount.
Hi Zahava, it does seem like a small amount but in a medium bowl and little tilted, it works fine.
Hi! Love the gingerbread house, thank you for sharing! How would you go about making the stain glass windows? And if you could share what candies you used, or how to look up little candies like those you used, that’d be great!
To make the white icing, do you just not add any coloring and it’s white? Thanks in advance!
Hello, thank you. For the stain glass windows you could either use Jolly Ranger Hard Candy, I tried to find out if they are vegan but you are getting mixed reviews online or to be on the safe side, I’ve ordered vegan hard candy online through well.ca
I’ve crushed the candies and then baked it together with the gingerbread. I did not use any colouring for the icing, it came out very white, but you could use white icing food colour.
Thank you for your response. Is this recipe an “edible” one. One that is tasty to eat, or is it for building only? Thanks again
Yes it is, but I would eat it within 3 days. I used almost the same recipe as for my Gingerbread Cookies (https://www.littleswissbaker.com/vegan-gingerbread-cookies/). The vegan royal icing gets really hard after a few days.
I made the cookie dough as instructed, and added about 200 g flour to make the dough less sticky. It was perfect. I can’t comment on the structural integrity of the royal icing because I use caramelized sugar to hold together gingerbread house walls. I have used aquafava and icing sugar many times and it’s fine as a glue for little structures. It is especially good for flooding cookies and painting on them.
Hi Andrea, the vegan royal icing works well as a glue, but caramel is definitely a good alternative.
Hi, I can’t wait to try this recipe, can I just ask if you can use sugar cane molasses instead of the syrupy kind?
Hi Sam, the fancy molasses I always use is sugar cane molasses. Have fun building the Gingerbread House
The gingerbread house cookie recipe is absolutely delicious. My decorations do not look as lovely as this, but all very very tasty.
Thank you Stacey
hello from New Zealand! do you think we could make this with coconut milk or cream instead of soy? It looks gorgeous….
Hi Catherine, Thank you. Any non-dairy milk should work fine with this recipe.