Christmas Cookie House

Name: Christmas Cookie House
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 140 grams Butter (or margarine); 1 Egg; 80 grams Sugar (use beet sugar if possible); 1 Vanilla essence; 280 grams Cake flour; 1 to 2 tablespoons Cocoa powder; 1/2 to 1 teaspoon Matcha; 200 grams Powdered sugar; 1 tsp Egg white; 2 to 3 drops Lemon juice; 1 Edible decorations (to taste)

cookpad.japan @cookpad_jp

About 3 years ago, I saw a small cookie house on sale at a neighborhood French pastry shop for more than 3,000 yen, so I tried making my own.
Since then, my child has been looking forward to making one every year, so this year I decided to make it again although I'm fighting morning sickness (I'm pregnant with my 2nd child) .

Use leftover icing (that you used to stick the house together) to make icicles hang under the roof, or make snow drifts around the decorative pieces on the outside, and so on. I have fun varying the decoration every year.
I used store-bought candies as decoration. Even small children love to look at the decorations. This year I glued a brick patterned chimney, and colored the exterior walls with red food coloring to color it slightly pink. I also made the tree 3D. Recipe by sakura'03

cookpad.japan @cookpad_jp

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Ingredients

140 gramsButter (or margarine)
1Egg
80 gramsSugar (use beet sugar if possible)
1Vanilla essence
280 gramsCake flour
1to 2 tablespoons Cocoa powder
1/2to 1 teaspoon Matcha
200 gramsPowdered sugar
1 tspEgg white
2to 3 drops Lemon juice
1Edible decorations (to taste)

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Steps

1

Cut out the house pattern out of thick paper. The design and size is up to you. The pattern on the top left is the chimney, which will be sliced at the folds when baking.
2

Make the dough. Combine butter and sugar in a bowl, and mix well until it turns pale. Add the egg little by little, and add vanilla essence. Add cake flour and fold in with a rubber spatula.
3

Divide the dough into portions for the white, brown, and green approximately in the proportion as the photo. The brown is with cocoa powder and the green is with matcha (I used powdered green tea this time) and knead until the colors are well-incorporated. When they are both evenly mixed, wrap each dough and refrigerate for an hour.
4

Sandwich the dough between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and roll out to 5 mm thick. Take the top sheet of plastic off. Lay the pattern on top and cut out using a small knife. The color of the dough is up to you. Since I like the powdered sugar added to look like snow to stand out, I use brown dough for the ground and roof, the white dough for the walls, and the green dough for the tree and wreath.
5

With the pattern paper still attached (on the bottom) to the dough pieces, bake in a 160 °C oven for 25 minutes. Take off the pattern paper and cool the pieces on a rack.
6

Make the decorative parts such as the fence, tree, wreath, animals and so on. Cut out any leftover dough with regular cookie cutters. The photo shows all the leftover dough this time.) Since the cookies will be covered with sugar, the dough is not that sweet.
7

Add just a little egg white to the powdered sugar, and mix until it's a bit stiffer than toothpaste. Add lemon juice and mix well again. Put the icing in a plastic bag turned inside out (this way, the seams won't get in the way) and cut a small bit off one corner in lieu of using a piping tip. You can color the icing if you like.
8

Draw on the roof or a pattern on the walls with icing, and let dry. When it's dry to the touch, assemble the walls → roof → chimney → base → decorative elements in that order. Each assembly step takes about 15 minutes each for the icing to dry.
9

Done. Put powdered sugar in a tea strainer and shake it to look like snow.
10

This is the side.
11

This is the back garden.