I hope everyone has been having a fantastic holiday season! One of my favorite traditions when coming home for the holidays is constructing a sweet, 100% edible gingerbread masterpiece. I love candy- I really do- so having the chance to create a fun, delicious and adorable house adorned with all my favorite candies is basically a dream come true! Plus the homemade gingerbread pieces make our home smell amazing. Choosing the candy is one of the things I look most forward to. Always try to go for variety! To decorate my house I chose Nerds, gummy bears and dinosaurs, candy canes, mints, Necco wafers, M n’ Ms, gumdrops and sour rainbow strips. It’s safe to say I’ve had an incredible amount of sugar since being home for the holidays.
For anyone on a mission to create their own gingerbread house, here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned over the previous Christmases:
- Take your time- allow at least 3 days for baking, cooling, assembling and decorating
- Roll out your dough between two sheets of parchment paper to avoid sticking
- Roll out pieces no more than 1/4 of an inch
- Immidiatly after baking, carefully shave off the edges of your pieces to make sure they still match the template
- Keep icing in zip lock bags and sealed
- If your icing is too liquidy, just add more powdered sugar and a dash of cream of tartar
- Use various objects as supports for your walls until they harden completely
Here are a few great sites for ideas on decorating, gingerbread recipes and templates that I’ve used:
How to and decorating tips: www.kingarthurflour.com
Great dough reciepe: www.epicurious.com
The template I used: www.thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk
Happy Baking!
This gingerbread house looks amazing haha! Nice blog!
xoxo, Lynna | howlynnaful
Hi Lynna- thanks so much!!! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
What a lovely idea and the gingerbread looks so delicious! I’m gonna try this next year! Thank you for the tips! 🙂
Hi Kim! Thanks so much 🙂 It’s so much fun to make, definitely go for it!