Baking – How to make curved gingerbread sheets for a gingerbread house

I make gingerbread houses every year. Walls should be approximately 1/4 inch thick. I have found that cutting the pieces first to work best. Yes there is some spread, but when they come out of the oven, I replace the stencil and trim up any spread (for the straight outside edges, a pizza cutter works well). I know it sounds redundant, but sometimes I don't cut quick enough, or I am distracted by the phone, or any other number of things, if I only cut after baking. With the items pre-cut, if I get distracted, I at least have a usable part. Granted I may have to shave any spread very gently with a microplane or the edge of a knife, but that is just what works for me.

I also will roll the dough out on parchment paper, cut and remove the excess, then slide the whole thing onto a pan for baking. This way, you don't get any "stretch" of your pieces. I have several square cookie cutters that I will use to cut out the windows and such. I make the windows rectangular by using the cookie cutter and cutting a square then moving it and cutting another half square. This is helpful because when the gingerbread comes out of the oven, you don't have to spend a lot of time with a knife trimming the inside of all the windows... you just punch any spread out with the cookie cutter.

As Sobachatina mentioned, melted sugar makes beautiful windows. I however, will lay the walls on a silicone mat and pour the sugar directly into the window holes. No need to "glue."

I'd hate for you to make a gingerbread house with the "wrong" icing. You want an icing that will dry rock hard, like cement. For this you will want to use "Royal Icing."

For larger houses, use canned goods to hold the walls in place while the icing dries. The house should be built at least one day before you start decorating, to be sure it has set up really good.

Welcome to Seasoned Advice first I will point you to an article in our blog Silpat, Parchment Paper or Plain Baking Sheet. @KatieK contrasts these cooking surfaces.Look at the instructions for time and temp. Are you thoroughly Preheating? You pictures indicate that you are using parchment, but you don't mention time/temp.

My first inclination based on what I see is that you are baking them too long at too low a temp, and not fully preheating. If you raise the temp and shorten the time the cookie will not spread as far. With 'scoop' cookies you expect the dough to spread some, but you are getting too much spread. The higher temperature will cause the cookie to form a solid (ok, solidish, it should be soft but 'strong enough' to hold form) This will also give you better "bottoms" as they will bake faster as well.

Another thing you might be doing is opening the oven door too often, this releases a lot more heat than you think, extending the correct baking time and slowing the process. I know it is sometimes hard to resist peeking, try to not open the door till you are at least 75% through the projected time.