The House The Friends Built

Yesterday, after reading Talia’s blogpost, I had a hit of inspiration to build a Gingerbread House. From scratch.

It was SO. MUCH. FUN.

I made the gingerbread dough last night using the recipe that Talia referred to, from The Red Deer. It’s super easy. I actually refrigerated it overnight, as I ran out of steam and didn’t feel like baking after dinner. It was okay, but needed a good hard working to soften it back up this morning.

I cut the template pieces out of baking paper, which meant I could stick them straight on my rolled –out dough and easily cut around it. Once my pieces were cut and baked, I brushed on the glaze and gave them plenty of time to cool.

The icing is also super easy, my only tip is that when it says, “Beat until very stiff peaks form” it means VERY. The icing works so much better as cement/glue when it’s really stiff. I didn’t include the lemon juice in the icing, because I didn’t have any.

We first put together the walls. I wanted to decorate them before I put the roof on, so that I could get to all of it easily.

We were probably more gung-ho with the icing than we really needed to be, but better to be safe and sorry! We let the walls set for a while we did some chores and had lunch. Once the icing was well and truly hard, we felt safe enough to start with the decorating.

I found it easiest to squeeze the glue straight onto the lollies then stick it on the house. I made a make-shift piping bag using a snap-lock bag with a small corner cut out. Worked like a charm.

We used coloured musk sticks, M&Ms, sour straps, liquorice and freckles.

Once we had the walls how we wanted them, it was time to add the roof.

Again, we probably used more icing than we needed to, but it’s certainly very stable as a result.

Pete and I had so much fun doing this together. Mayana was a little bit involved, but she was putting more lollies into her mouth than onto the house, so we distracted her with ABC2 after a while!

So without any further ado, here is our very beautiful Gingerbread House, of which we are suitably proud – especially considering this is the first time that either of us have done any kind of Gingerbread House building/decorating, and we did it all from scratch! I think we may have added another tradition to our little family Christmas list.

Now everybody pray with me that it survives it's 2.5 hour trip out to Christmas day with Nana & Pop!!

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