Making gingerbread houses This year, keep it simple …

Two years ago, in the Compass arts and entertainment supplement to this newspaper, I shared instructions for making miniature gingerbread houses. Those instructions are so involved and convoluted that even I can’t follow them.

This year, my holiday gift to you, our readers, is a simplified version of those instructions.

The first and most important thing you need to know is that this gingerbread cookie recipe is the simplest, easiest and tastiest gingerbread cookie recipe that exists perhaps in the entire world. My daughter found it when she was very young, in a storybook called “The Cookie-Store Cat,� by Cynthia Rylant.

This recipe rolls out and cuts like a dream and the cookies are tender and tasty even days after you’ve baked them. The houses, of course, are a little trickier. But as you make them, repeat like a mantra these wise words from master baker Patsy Stroble: These houses don’t have to be perfect; they just have to make me happy.

Cookies are not brick and they are not steel; royal icing is not silicone caulk. The edges of your walls will be crooked. No one will care. Your houses will still be beautiful and impressive.

I personally prefer to make several small houses instead of one large house. A small house is more forgiving and doesn’t require as much engineering;  if you make a mistake, it’s not as much of a problem, since you have lots of other (small) pieces you can substitute for the broken bits; and if you make a lot of houses, you have more opportunities to find a decorating/icing scheme that you like.

The recipe below makes probably four houses (more if you’re very careful and meticulous). I usually  make about four batches. It’s an easy dough to make and why not have extra on hand?

One thing I learned after that first gingerbread house article in 2008 is that if I try to explain this in too much detail, it’s going to be more confusing than if I let you figure it out. Once the pieces are in front of you, it will make sense.

When my daughter and I make gingerbread houses, it takes three weeks. But we make two dozen houses. If you’re only making three or four houses, you can get it all done in a weekend. But be forewarned that this is a time-consuming project that requires planning.

You will need  some playing cards to use as a template. Playing cards are the perfect size and they don’t warp or melt when they come in contact with the dough. Of course you’ll want to wash them first.

After you make your dough, you’re going to have to let it “rest� in the refrigerator for a few hours. When it’s ready, take out one packet of dough at a time (this recipe makes four packets; each packet makes about one house) and roll it out. The dough should be cool, but it shouldn’t be so cold that it laughs at your rolling pin.

Don’t be shy about flouring your board or countertop; these cookies won’t toughen up unless you really manhandle them (all cookie doughs do like to be treated with tenderness, however, and will get harder after they’ve been rolled out more than two or three times).

Trace one playing card onto your dough four times, to make two side walls and two roof pieces.

Here’s what you have to do with the other card; it sounds confusing but it’s not. Take a pair of scissors and cut a triangle off one side of the top of the card, from about 1 inch down up to the top center. Do the same on the other side. This will give you the front and rear walls for your house. The top has to be triangular so you can fit the roof over it.

So now you should have four pieces that are the same size and shape as a playing card; and two pieces that are the size and shape of a playing card except the tops have been trimmed so they have a triangular peak.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and gently transfer the house pieces to the sheet. Make some more. Make a few extras because I guarantee that some of them will warp or crack while you’re baking or building.

The cookies need to be cool before you can work with them. Usually I make the cookies and then freeze them (in freezer storage bags with a zipper top). You probably don’t need to do that; but if you try to work with warm cookies fresh from the oven, they will break.

I highly recommend that you decorate your pieces before you try to assemble them. Use the royal icing to affix candies, coconut flakes, chocolate or multicolored sprinkles, whatever makes your heart soar.

I sometimes worry about the raw egg white in the royal icing for these cookies. No one has ever reported any ill effects from eating a gingerbread house;  but be warned that some people cannot and should not eat anything made with raw egg white.

If you have such a person in your life, buy frosting in tubes at the grocery store and use it to affix the candies to your house. You can also make your icing with powdered egg whites, but I find it doesn’t stick as well as the icing made with real eggs.

To cement the pieces together without royal icing (this is somewhat difficult but effective): At low to medium heat, melt a half cup of sugar in a skillet, stirring constantly until it melts into a thick syrup (about 4 minutes). Quickly, and with the heat on very low, dunk the edge of one piece at a time into the sugar and immediately affix it to its matching piece. Repeat until all the walls and roofs are connected.

The technique for putting the pieces together is the same, whether you use melted sugar or Royal Icing. The two pieces with the triangular tops are the front and back. They need to be affixed to two wall pieces. If I try to explain exactly how this works, it will confuse me as well as you. Once the pieces are in front of you it will be obvious.

Keep this in mind: The triangular pieces should not be affixed to the outside edges of the walls. You need to run your royal icing in a strip along the wall about a quarter inch in from the edge. Otherwise your roof will be too small.

To pipe your icing in a nice straight line onto that wall, load the icing into a zipper-top storage bag and cut a tiny snip off one of the bottom corners. Then squeeze the icing out of that little hole (be sure the zipper top is sealed nice and tight or the icing will ooze out).

Treat your houses very gently for the first hour or so after you’ve assembled them. After that, they’re surprisingly sturdy.

You will have some failed efforts and some of your walls and roofs will fall apart. Don’t give up; it’s going to work out fine.

And remember: It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it’s not going to be perfect; it just has to make you happy.