Whether you are using cookie cutter gingerbread house sets, or gingerbread house templates, you have a few options when it comes to how you cut out your panels.
1. Roll dough, cut out panels, and use a spatula to lift, and transfer to the baking sheet.
Advantages to this method are primarily those of dough conservation. When I use this method, in conjunction with the cookie cutter set I've used for 18 years, I can make 5 sets of gingerbread house pieces from the gingerbread recipe which I use. Note that I roll my dough very thin. The one drawback to this method is that my gingerbread house panels distort, when lifted from the rolling surface. To alleviate this issue, try rolling out your dough on parchment paper, removing scraps after pressing the cookie cutters into the dough. Transfer pieces from parchment paper, to baking sheet.
Even better, and our latest discovery, you can cut your parchment paper to fit the baking sheet, remove the scraps after cutting your panels into the rolled dough, and transfer the parchment paper to the baking sheet. This saves a LOT of time and work in the baking process. There may still be mild distortion in pieces, as the dough spreads a little bit in the baking process, but for the household gingerbread artist, this is not serious.
2. Bake a sheet of gingerbread cookie dough, and cut your pieces out of the finished cookie sheet.
The advantage of this method is that the shape will not distort, because the dough is already baked. The challenge is that you must do your cutting immediately. If you allow the gingerbread cookie sheet to cool too much, it will harden, and be susceptible to breakage. As you cut the pieces, you will have some waste...tasty scraps, but potentially not workable for any other decorating purposes. Also, the edges of your panel pieces will be a little crumby. If you are interested in a precise gingerbread structure, however, this avoids distortion of the panels.
Find all the tools you need for your gingerbread house decorating project at Gingerbread Essentials!
