Making a gingerbread house is a fun and creative holiday project for all ages. Use baked gingerbread and icing to create a simple or complex house, and decorate with candies and other non-perishable foods. Variations include adding another floor or creating a different type of structure.
Making a gingerbread house is not only a fun craft project, but it also makes a great edible holiday centerpiece! A gingerbread house can be simple or complex, quick or time consuming, an activity that involves your children or something done as a creative solo project. Creating and decorating a gingerbread house with icing and candies and letting your imagination run wild is a fun and creative holiday baking project for all ages.
A traditional gingerbread house uses baked gingerbread and a simple rectangular house shape with four walls and a sloping roof. The thick icing holds the gingerbread pieces together and is also used for a “glue” to hold a variety of candies on the house. A sturdy base like a foil-covered board is the “backyard” of the house, and multiple gingerbread pieces covered in white frosting create a snowy backyard. Gumdrop shrubs and candy stepping stone paths can be added.
It’s often best to bake the gingerbread one day and then assemble and decorate the house the next. Young children may have too short an attention span to get involved in baking, assembling and decorating in just one day. Encourage the young ones by exercising patience if they put the candy crooked or make a little mess. Think ahead using an old tablecloth or vinyl tablecloth that can be easily cleaned to cover the area under the gingerbread house to be decorated. Plan the project correctly by purchasing all the necessary ingredients in advance.
Many great recipes for gingerbread and gingerbread frostings can be found on recipe sites on the Internet. Thin cardboard can be used for the house motif, with the pieces cut out then placed on the rolled out gingerbread. Some people use a pizza cutter to cut out the pattern pieces. Dough scraps can be formed into gingerbread house details and baked separately as they will take less time than larger house walls.
Baked and cooled gingerbread house wall pieces can be attached by placing a line of icing on one slab and then holding another slab against the icing-covered edge for a few seconds. The newly attached pieces should be left on for 20-30 minutes to make them sturdy enough for decoration. Other non-perishable foods besides candy can be used to decorate a gingerbread house such as coconut for snow, pretzel sticks for fences, and cereal squares for a thatched roof. Cookies and popcorn also work well as gingerbread house decorations. A quick, no-bake way to make a gingerbread-free type of gingerbread house is to use graham crackers and canned icing.
Many people like to use variations of the classic method of making a gingerbread house. They add another floor, create a Victorian house, church or even a beach house, post office or other type of gingerbread structure. Some people add ingredients like chocolate to the dough. For example, the White House of the United States featured a magnificent colonial-style structure of chocolate gingerbread on its dining room table in 2004. One hundred and fifty pounds of chocolate were used to make the enormous presidential gingerbread house and a hundred pounds of gingerbread.
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