Gusteau’s Gingerbread House – Inspired by Pixar’s Ratatouille

Gusteau’s Gingerbread House – Inspired by Pixar’s Ratatouille

Each year, I like to do an elaborate Disney-inspired gingerbread house based off a building from a Disney movie. The first one was Rapunzel’s tower that I created for Disney Family. Then last year, I did one based off of Tiana’s Palace restaurant from my fave Disney movie, Princess and the Frog. This year, I decided to do one based off of my favorite Pixar movie, Ratatouille. I created a Gusteau’s Restaurant gingerbread house, perfect timing too with the TikTok Ratatouille the Musical emerging this year! You can print the custom templates I made to create Gusteau’s out of gingerbread here, and see the directions below! It’s a big project, so I recommend having a day where you bake the dough and make the cookies, and then a separate day to decorate and assemble:

Cookie Ingredients

• 2 cups brown sugar
• 4 sticks room temperature butter
• 1 cup molasses
• 2 Tbsp ginger
• 4 Tbsp cinnamon
• 2 Tbsp cloves
• 4 tsp baking soda
• 8 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup water

Step 1: Make Your Dough!

1. Combine butter, sugar, and molasses with an electric mixer.
2. Add in cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and baking soda, combine.
3. Add in half your flour and water, combine. Then add remaining flour and water until combined.
4. Place saran wrap over your mixing bowl of dough and put in the fridge for at least an hour.

Step 2: Bake Your Cookies!

1. Print out the Gusteau’s gingerbread house templates you’ll need here. Cut all the pieces out and set aside. 
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
3. Roll out about 1/6 of your dough at a time, and then place the template pieces over the dough, cutting and tracing with a sharp, non-serrated knife.
4. Once all your pieces are traced and cut out, place on parchment paper on cookie sheets and bake for 11 minutes.
5. Set aside to completely cool or place in a container sealed if you’re decorating another day.

Frosting Ingredients

• Black food coloring
• Red food coloring
• Yellow food coloring
• Green food coloring
• 4 egg whites
• 6 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Step 3: Make Your Frosting the Day You Decorate!

1. Combine half your egg whites and half your powdered sugar thoroughly.
2. Add in remaining, plus vanilla extract and combine thoroughly. 
3. Place a lightly damp towel over your mixing bowl when not using your frosting so it doesn’t dry out.

Step 4: Decorate and Assemble!

1. You’ll need five piping bags with round tips. 
2. Fill a piping bag with plain white icing, a piping bag with gray icing (made by combining some of your icing with a couple drops of black food coloring), fill a piping bag with red icing (combining some of your icing with red food coloring), and fill 1/4 of a bag with yellowish orange icing (combining 3 drops yellow with 1 drop red), and then 1/4 of a bag filled with green icing. 
3. You will decorate the pieces while they’re lying flat, and allow them to dry before assembling them in a standing position. (You can leave the back and two top roof portions undecorated since they won’t be seen).
4. Once your icing is dry on your cookie pieces, use white icing on the bottom of your walls to “glue” them to a piece of cardboard. You may need to gently hold in place until the icing hardens enough to stand up on its own
5. Once your four walls are up, place the larger trapezoid-shaped roof on top, using icing to “glue” it in place.
6. Do the same with the four angled roofs, you may need an extra helping hand to hold these in place until dry enough to stand on their own.
7. Use icing to “glue” the Gusteau sign on top of your smaller trapezoid-shaped roof. Once staying on, add it to the very top of your house.
8. Use icing to stick Remy on the cardboard. And there you have it, a Gusteau’s gingerbread house!