Mama's Gingerbread House Recipe

This recipe will make 4 large gingerbread houses or 7-8 small gingerbread houses.

Ingredients

1/2 c butter softened
1 cup Crisco shortening
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs room temperature
1/2 c molasses
2 t baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt
4+ cups all purpose flour (add more to knead and roll out dough)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl combine all dry ingredients: baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger salt and 4 cups flour. Stir with a whisk, and set aside.
Cream the butter, shortening and sugar together. Add the eggs and molasses, combine. Now add the dry ingredients to the wet, about a cup at a time till completely incorporated.
On a clean counter surface, spread out about 1/2 cup flour, pour the dough onto the flour and knead in more flour until it is a good consistence for rolling. Use a rolling pin to roll to a 1/4 inch thickness, and cut out the shapes.
Place with just a little room for each shape on the cookie sheet bake for 9 minutes, keep a close eye so they don't burn, if you roll them out too thinly they can!)

Notes

After pulling them out, it is helpful to trim any skiwampus edges that some times occur when baking. I just QUICKLY and carefully stick the template on the cookie and cut off any strange edges. DON"T burn yourself! Be careful! This step will help your houses come together clean and straight!

Because this recipe uses primarily shortening, it does NOT need wrapped in plastic wrap and chilled. You can if you want, or if you need to mix the dough one day and bake another.