I know several have mentioned a laser cut gingerbread house, found this one online: tried to see if anyone has posted it yet but from my phone it’s hard to tell. Sorry if it’s a repeat. 
The image came from vonkonow.com.
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Neat. This is something I’ve been wanting to try ever since I ordered. The hard part is making sure it doesn’t taste disgusting thanks to carbonized edges.
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Heres an Instructibles! http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Cut-Gingerbread-House/?ALLSTEPS
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Do people actually at gingerbread houses? I always thought they were like Holiday fruitcakes… kind of put out every year but not actually eaten… 
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Some people make 'em and eat 'em. Some people snack on the supplies while making them.
I wouldn’t want to eat one that had been sitting out any length of time.
My family often makes gingerbread tree ornaments on christmas eve. Some are saved, some are munched. The ones that are saved can last a very long time if taken care of. We still have a few that my older sister made when she was a child. (you would not want to put one of those in your mouth!)
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My kids ate the frosting and the candy decorations. By Christmas, it looked pretty pathetic, and we just threw out the house (gingerbread). We learned to let the kids each build their own graham cracker house. Everything was eaten and the was no fighting over the candy. - Rich
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The only time we’ve made Gingerbread houses they have been from kits. That pre-baked gingerbread has got to taste horrible, but I’ve never even thought to try it. I’ve also done the graham cracker thing. That said, if I was making one and laser-cutting the parts, I would certainly be eating the scraps!
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I guess it depends on your goals. No shade here, different people value different things. I cook most days and I’d hate to put the effort into something that didn’t taste good, just like fruitcake (edit: as in, despite its poor and maligned nature, there exists some pretty great fruitcake). You can make a delightful gingerbread house, just takes extra work.
My tip if you’re making spice cookies is to nearly double all the spices the recipe calls for, with the possible exception of clove. And also add a thumb of fresh grated ginger to any dried. Too many spice cookies lack the courage of their own convictions! 
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Post your recipe? Those sound drool-worthy. There’s a special “Cooking with Lasers” thread here:
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Growing up, my mom would actually MAKE the gingerbread that we used. She also made up this sort of “Sugar based glue” so that it was edible. After dinner each night we’d be allowed to eat x pieces of the candies on the house. By the time Christmas came, it was either gone or pretty sorry looking.
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I tend to make a pretty standard “hermit cookie”, since I visit New Brunswick a few times a year, and there’s this one bakery in Saint John that just makes the best hermit cookies, haha. You might also be able to use it as a gingerbread base, just rolling it out a bit thinner.
I tend to go by taste and feel, but I looked at my notes and here’s a rough idea:
Preheat your oven to 375F / 191C.
In a bowl, mix together 2c + 2T all-purpose flour, 2t baking soda, 3 - 3.5t cinnamon, 2t ginger, 1/2 - 3/4t cloves. Stir together with a fork and set aside.
In a separate bowl, or your mixer’s bowl, cream together a stick of butter (1/2c, 112g) and a cup of brown sugar until your mixture is nice and fluffy. If your butter is unsalted, add 1/4 - 1/3t salt. If you’re not using the kind of blade that scrapes the bowl down automatically, you might want to stop once or twice and scrape it down with a spatula. Next, add in 1/4c of molasses (you could also use something like sorghum syrup, but whatever it is should be dark and caramel-ly) and beat until incorporated, followed by a grated knob of ginger (say, thumb-sized) and a large egg. Make sure everything is mixed well (it’s impossible to overbeat the wet ingredients), then stir in your dry ingredients by hand. Once the dough is mixed, add in a boatload (3/4 - 1c) of good raisins.
Your dough should be pretty easy to work by hand. Turn it out and divide it into two halves, patting each out into a 12-by-3-or-4-ish-inch rectangle. Put a sheet of parchment on your baking sheet, then put your rectangles on top - don’t cut them into individual cookies.
You bake the cookies for approximately 18 minutes, but depending on a number of factors like the vagaries of individual ovens or the water content of your flour, they can take quite a bit longer - I’ve had them in for as many as 25 minutes, or as few as 15. It’s a very dark dough, so it can be tough to gauge when they’re done. You should be able to make out a golden hue on the bottom, while the tops will be soft but not sticky - they’ll firm up as they cool.
Once your bars are cool, you can cut them along the short axis (or diagonally!) into a number of bars. These might be my favorite cookie, and require no icing or glaze. If you wanted to use them structurally, I’d bake them thinner and harder, then glue them together with royal icing or the like.
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Yummmmmm! These will have to make it into the holiday baking schedule for sure! Thanks for sharing the recipe!
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bookmarked!
You’re super welcome! I have no tolerance for people who like to keep personal recipes secret…where’s the fun in that?
It’s getting to be that time again to start planning some holiday baking. I’m not sure what I’m going to do this year. Traditionally, I do three cookies (usually spice cookies, a soft pumpkin cookie with cream cheese frosting, and either sugar cookies with brown butter frosting or rosemary shortbread), three fudges (chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter) and whatever random frantic thing I foolishly decide is a wise decision to tackle at the very last minute.
I kind of want to get into making my own truffles, though! As in the chocolate kind. One I thought of was a darker milk chocolate with a filling made of buttered-toast-with-jam-infused-white chocolate ganache. I’d love to find a way to make one that incorporates dulse (seaweed), which is popular on the coast - maybe doing a salted caramel one, but replace the big salt crystals with little pieces of dulse? So many options.
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There is only one thing worse than someone not sharing recipes. Those that intentionally omit, add or change an ingredient so that no one is able to replicate the taste of the original.
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it’s downright dastardly
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I’m totally with you. I’ve never understood why some people want to keep their recipes secret. Truth is 99% of the people out there (in the Western world, anyway) don’t want to go to the trouble of making it themselves anyway. I’ve found it fascinating over the last few years how many chain resteraunts have actually started publishing their recipies, that way their clientele know what’s in their food, and when they see what they think is a “hard” recipie they lose any interest in making it themselves. I’m sure the group here doesn’t fit that stereotype, makers like to make things, after all, and what’s better to make than something that looks awesome and is delicious too!
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My wife is an excellent chef/cook, but when I ask her about her recipes, she says she starts with what is written down, but then just changes something (extra pinch of this, smittering of that, substitute an eye balling of whatever).
Always an interesting learning curve when trying to narrow down her recipes. Probably why I just don’t cook much at all.
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not just chain restaurants… for example Avery Brewing lists the homebrew recipe for all of their beers, right on each beer’s page (scroll down, on the right).
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I cook by “feel” a lot as well. The one downside is that I can almost never re-create a sauce exactly the same way.
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