Gingerbread Haus Series 3

Gingerbread Haus Dough Ingredients (recipe follows)

personal critique of this foto shoot:
Because this was a run-full-tilt-nonstop day from 6:00 am until 5:00 pm, the opportunity for the foto shoot was after daylight, hence the artificial overhead lighting glare.
Trying to keep the "circle" format, I placed the ingredients on my only plain plates, which unfortunately were dark blue - this made the clear measure cup with the dark molasses "disappear" into the background.
Limited to just 5 small blue plates, I used a clear pie pan to hold the all the flour - which being white "disappeared" into the background. What I should have done was just put part of the flour onto the fifth plate and place the plates into a circle, however it was getting very late as I was blipping/making the dough (smack my forehead with the flat of my palm for the universal "WHAT was I THINKing?" gesture), thus my logic and deductive reasoning were lacking.

But at least viewers will get this recipe: *

Fox RunCraftsmen Gingerbread House Dough Recipe

5 cups sifted all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg, ground
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ginger, ground
1 cup firm pack brown sugar
1 cup solid white vegetable shortening
1 cup unsulphured molasses

Melt shortening in a 4 qt. saucepan. (I use a 6 qt. pan with more stirring space.)
Add sugar and molasses and blend well.
Make sure the sugar is fully dissolved.
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and ginger.
Gradually add 4 cups of the dry ingredients to the melted shortening mixture.
Mix thoroughly.
Sprinkle the last 1 cup of dry ingredients onto a countertop or pastry board.
Knead dough in the flour until thoroughly mixed, then divide into three equal parts.
Roll each part out into a ¼ inch thick rectangle on an ungreased cookie sheet. Put a layer of parchment paper on top while rolling to prevent the rolling pin from sticking to the dough. A damp towel underneath the cookie sheet will keep it from sliding while rolling out the dough.
Cut out the various gingerbread house sections.
Remove excess dough, then bake as is on the cookie sheet.
DO NOT REMOVE the excess dough in the doorway. It will help keep the door shape during baking. DO NOT CUT THE WINDOWS OUT YET!
Bake in a preheated 375 F oven (190 C) for about 15 minutes or until lightly browned.
As soon as you remove from the oven, RECUT the door cut outs, and CUT the WINDOW AT THIS TIME. When the dough is cooled, remove these pieces.
Let stand on cookie sheet until completely cooled.

* DISCLAIMER: This dough is NOT a cookie dough for eating! It is just for making the houses - it is very greasy since it uses three times the amount of shortening as other edible gingerbread cookie recipes AND it only uses one spice, so there is not a lot of flavor. It is very grainy in texture and until it completely dries, is more likely to crumble than my favorite recipe. You can easily cut it when it comes out of the oven, but I do have issues with how easily it can be imprinted by just a dropped cookie cutter, thus marring the piece being worked on. But, it is the recipe that the cookie cutter manufacturer included, so I printed it to be unbiased.
My favorite recipe will follow later in series.