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CREATING a gingerbread house is a fun festive activity, but shoddy construction can spoil the party and put any gingerbread inhabitants in serious danger. This recipe and some tips will help you avoid catastrophe.

First, create a design. It is helpful to draw the pieces for your house on paper, then cut these shapes out to use as templates. The quantities of ingredients listed will give you enough gingerbread to make a structure 30 centimetres tall with walls 20 cms wide.

Building requires a strong and stable biscuit. , so that the pieces stay flat. This means no eggs or raising agents. A high flour-to-fat ratio also makes for a tougher biscuit: proteins in flour form a gluten network that provides strength and elasticity to help the pieces resist deformation.

Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a saucepan. Mix the flour and spices in a large bowl, then stir it into the butter mixture. If necessary, add a splash of water to help the dough come together.

Roll out your dough on a sheet of baking paper the size of your baking tray and cut the pieces guided by your paper templates. Ensure the pieces share edges wherever possible to make the most of the space on the tray. The dough will tend to expand when baking, so it is a good idea to leave some excess dough in place around the edges of outer pieces, to help them maintain their shape.

Bake the biscuits at 200°C for 12 to 15 minutes, until they start to darken at the edges. On removing from the oven, immediately recut the pieces before they harden.

For an impressive decorative feature, create window holes in the gingerbread, place crushed boiled sweets in the windows and put the pieces back into the oven for about 5 minutes to melt the sweets and form colourful glazed windows. If you have a small light that will fit inside the house, they will look truly spectacular.

You will need something to bond your pieces together. , but I found these much too sticky and tricky to work with. It contains protein-rich egg whites. These proteins denature and coagulate when beaten, making the icing hard when it dries. Mix the beaten egg whites with half the icing sugar, then slowly mix in the rest.

Use a piping bag to apply the icing to the edges of the pieces and wherever else it is needed. Stick the base of the walls to the board you are building on. To keep the roof panels from sliding down before the icing dries, first stick a big square of baking paper to the underside of the two panels with icing, so they are held together by the paper. Then stick the roof on.

Have fun decorating the house. The low moisture and high sugar content means the biscuits should be good to eat for about a week.

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