Janice Foley, child psychology and cooking teacher at MHS, provided The Globe with her favorite holiday recipe for making gingerbread houses.

Though her cooking class baked and assembled these tasty treats in October for Halloween, this recipe is just as appropriate for creating beautiful, wintry abodes.

Gingerbread dough ingredients:

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon cloves

2/3 cup molasses           

1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ cup butter or margarine

1 tablespoon cinnamon

¼ cup water                       

¼ teaspoon salt

1 egg

2 teaspoons baking soda

5 to 5 ½ cups flour

Directions:

1. Bring the brown sugar and molasses to a boil in saucepan.

2. Add the butter or margarine and let it melt.

3. Transfer mixture to Kitchenaid mixing bowl (or electric mixer) and add water. Let mixture cool.

4. Add 1 cup flour to mixture. Beat.

5. Mix in egg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, salt and baking soda. Then add almost all the remaining flour (4 to 41/2 cup flour).

6. Work the dough with your hands and some more flour until you have a nice, smooth ball. Divide the dough into two equal parts. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and place it into the refrigerator until the next day.

7. Roll out the smooth dough on a lightly floured pastry board. Do not use too much flour. When the dough is about ¼ inch thick, cut out the pattern pieces of the house…Use a sharp knife! Do not forget to cut out the windows and the door. Make and bake cut-out shapes with the leftover dough.

8. Place the cut dough on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake in a preheated, 350-degrees oven for about 10-12 minutes. Place the patterned pieces over each piece of cooked dough and trim each piece with a sharp knife. Let the pieces cool on the cookie sheet.

9. Wrap them loosely until the next day. (If at home, make sure pieces are thoroughly cooled.)

10. Unwrap the house pieces and lay them flat. Decorate each piece of the house as you like using icing and candy. Icing is used in the decorator tube. Candies can be pressed into icing at this time. (Don’t put candies too close to the edge because pieces need to be “cemented” together with icing later.) Let all pieces dry overnight. When all pieces are decorated and dried the house is ready to be assembled.

11. Make another recipe: icing (see below).

Put house together on an aluminum foil covered cardboard base.

Icing ingredients and directions:

3 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar (1 box)

3 egg whites

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Put confectioners’ sugar into a bowl.

2. Add cream of tartar to egg whites and beat until stiff.

3. Fold confectioners’ sugar into stiff egg whites.

4. Put some icing into a decorator tube and use to decorate house pieces  or assemble house.