Gingerbread Houses

I love to build gingerbread houses. I always have, and it is great fun. I do tend to get carried away though. One year I built one with a Jolly Rancher foundation.  It was so cool, but it crumbled in the car on the way home. This year I was determined to build a nice one. I had found a great gingerbread cookie recipe and was determined that I could make that recipe work for a house. So, the boys and I went to work. Okay, it was mostly me, but they did get to build their own little houses from graham crackers. Here is my process, and things I learned along the way.
Step 1: Build the house out of paper first.
I built this model (to scale) out of cardstock. Mine was 11.5 inches tall. When I was satisfied with its design, I dismantled it to use as pattern pieces for the final house. Two birds with one stone, right?

Step 2: Bake the gingerbread, then let it sit out overnight. (Sorry, no photos of this step)
I used my cookie recipe, but left out the baking soda (so it wouldn't rise) and baked the pieces twice as long as the recipe said, so the pieces would be hard & stand up on their own. It worked great! A handy tip is to roll out the dough between two sheets of waxed paper & freeze it for 20-30 minutes before cutting & baking.

Step 3: Assemble the house.
I put mine on a cake board and used royal icing as glue. Next time I'll put it on something sturdier though, and I'll tint the icing to blend in to the gingerbread. When the house is assembled, make sure to give it enough time for the icing "glue" to harden completely. That way your walls won't cave in when you're decorating (an hour should do it).

Step 4: Decorate!
I got most of our decorating supplies from the bulk foods section at Winco. It is cheaper that way & you can buy just the amount you'll need. I used frosted mini wheats for the roof, candy-coated sunflower seeds for the lights, chocolate rocks for the fireplace & M&Ms, tootsie rolls, gum drops, peppermints and candy canes. I tinted some royal icing blue for the "siding," and used black candy melts for the lights string.

I am happy with the way it turned out & am already planning next year's house!

The boys had a great time decorating their houses too. I built them out of graham crackers, using royal icing, and set them on small pieces of foil-covered cardboard. I gave each of them an icing bag closed with an elastic (so it wouldn't come out the top) and a bowl of candy and let them go to town.

They loved decorating them all on their own, and it gave me time to work on my masterpiece, LOL!