DIY: Gingerbread House

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!

Chelsea is a San Francisco-based journalist whose passion revolves around exploring the world, immersing herself in foreign cultures, and of course, eating and drinking everything delicious.

Her work can be found in TravelPulse, Forbes, INSIDER, SF Gate and more. She covers all things food, drink and travel and is always up for an adventure, whether that means an adrenaline-pumping excursion or trying a new cuisine.