Cadbury Dairy Milk Christmas Chocolate House Kit 840g

Product Information

Our verdict:Ideal if you're not keen on gingerbread, but it's messy to build and will likely end up covered in fingerprints. I dipped SweeTARTS Mini Chewy Tangy Candies into some of my white chocolate ganache and attached those around my tree as "balls". The experience of decorating the house was intricate and took us a while, but we found it rewarding and were very pleased with the result. There's a brilliant variety of decorations included that come in all colours, shapes and sizes. 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.

Sieve the confectioners' sugar. In a heavy-based saucepan heat the butter, unsweetened cocoa and ginger ale. Once the butter's melted, whisk in the confectioners' sugar. Lift the chocolate gingerbread out of the tin and unwrap the paper. Pour over the icing just to cover the top and cut into fat slabs when set.For the gingerbread, put the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup into a pan over a very low heat, stirring until the butter and sugar have melted. Set aside to cool. Note: the lemon extract will slowly evaporate, so continue adding a little bit of gold dust and lemon extract as time goes by. Once the gingerbread has cooled, transfer the pieces to a lightly floured work surface and cut out the gingerbread pieces using the templates, re-rolling the trimmings as necessary. Line the baking sheets with baking paper and carefully transfer the cut pieces of gingerbread onto them. Keep all the small pieces together on one tray.

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. Use a piping bag of royal icing to decorate your house however you like. If you intend to eat it, remember that the more icing you add now, the better the cookie will taste later. 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. 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.Once the house was up we were pleased with its appearance, and we really had to fight the urge to chomp on the chimney, which is a Flake.