Holiday Cooking with Kids
Gingerbread Houses
Pre-Built House Kits
I’ve noticed pre-built house kits in grocery stores. While containing all that awful stuff we avoid in food, they happen to be a great way to save some time and get straight to the decorating. Alternatively you can buy kits with pre-baked pieces (resources below and right). Your third option is to buy a kit where you bake the house. The fourth (and most complicated) option is to take on the baking and cutting yourself - special pans are offered to shape roof, walls, etc. or you can just bake sheets and cut them up when they are still soft.
I’m assuming here that your house is already built, and that the icing to bind walls to roof, etc., is dry and hard (at least 8 hours).
Keys to Decorating Success1. Cover your table (and floor) with something disposable, like newspapers, cut garbage bags, etc.
2. Make sure you have enough icing but make it in batches as it dries quickly and keep the bowl you are using covered with a wet dishcloth if it’s going to sit.
3. Make sure the icing is stiff enough. If it’s too runny candy will slide off and walls will fall apart. If your royal icing is not stiff enough then beat in more confectioner’s (icing) sugar.
4. Make sure you have enough candy. Seriously! Even little creator’s houses will look spectacular if they are encrusted with enough candy.
5. Make sure the candy is the right color/right for theme. Choose candy colors in your holiday theme.
6. A stable work surface for the house. I use a large plastic cutting board (keep in mind that cutting board is going to be out of regular use until the gingerbread house is gone) and place the house on top. You can also use cardboard and cover it with tinfoil or paper for your theme.
Then when we work on the sides, back or whatever we can easily turn the house without actually handling it. If you are making the house from scratch I suggest you mount it on a piece of white cardboard and then place the whole thing on top of the cutting board or a larger piece of cardboard. Using a cutting board also allows you a bigger landscape to decorate if you wish to add a garden, etc. A really large board might accommodate two or more houses.
7. Use disposable pastry bags - or makeshift pastry bags, such as Ziploc bags (thicker freezer bags are best), with a corner nipped off.
8. Royal icing will keep overnight in the refrigerator. It will be runnier the next day but will still work for gluing decorations on - but make sure you place food film (plastic wrap) right on the surface to prevent a skin from forming. I've even had a pastry bag make it to the next day by covering the tip with food film.
Quick tip: Stapling the open end of a filled pastry bag allows littler decorators to squeeze without icing flowing out both ends. and extra-tight rubber band accomplishes this too.
Our house rule: All things on the gingerbread house must be edible – but they don’t have to conform strictly to our general “food rules” which means some of the candy we might use might have PHOs and HFCS – although I try and still choose the best choice of what’s available and we still try and make informed purchases, especially since most of the candy seems to get “tested” during building. We don’t eat the gingerbread houses we decorate. If we were intending to eat it, I would make the gingerbread myself and watch very carefully what was purchased to put on it. One exception to the house rule is toothpicks.
A gingerbread house decorating party can be tons of fun with party goers bringing an “edible house decoration” to share (i.e., a favorite candy or cookie), etc. The hostess provides the houses and the royal icing (the glue). You will need tons of royal icing for multiple houses. Using smaller houses makes this more manageable. Also look around your neighborhood – as there may be “gingerbread house decorating” parties at local schools, community centers and cooking schools.
• Candy Blocks
• Candy Logs
• Marshmallows to build snowmen
• Stale marshmallows flattened for gravestones.
• Newman’s Own Tops & Bottoms for shingles
• Marshmallow Crème for snow drifts
• Ice Cream cones (to be covered with decorations for turrets and trees)
• Pastilles for Eyes (use food coloring markers)
• Food Coloring Pens - Foodoodler Markers
• Taffy for shaping feet, limbs, or anything!
• Pretzel rods for holding things up and little pretzel sticks which make a fantastic wood log cabin effect on walls
• Pre-packaged cotton candy (White makes great snowdrifts)
• Popcorn
• Pretzels with windowpane pattern (make great windows)
• Sunflower seeds (for Halloween or slate roof tiles)
• Marshmallow Peeps (they make seasonal ones like ghosts and pumpkins for Halloween, Christmas trees, hearts, etc.)
• Gummy worms and Gummy Spiders.
• Necco wafer disks make great patio stones or broken great mosaics.
• Wafer cookies for bricks.
• Vanilla cookies for roof tiles.
• Shredded Coconut (with green food coloring for grass – seal coconut in a bag with food coloring and shake and rub gently till the coconut is tinted.)
• Peppermint Candies & Candy Canes for Christmas
• Gumdrops!
• Cookie crumbs for dirt
• Gelatin Sheets for glazing windows.
• Fruit sheets/leather for pathways and windows
• Cinnamon Sticks for woodpiles
• Cereal from shredded wheat (great hay) to mini shredded wheat for roof tiles. I've seen colored sugar cereals used effectively as decoration - the colors are muted so give a storybook effect
• Chocolate or Candy coated raisins and seeds -
• Lifesaver candy (I've heard they will melt into the gingerbread if placed on walls/windows before baking but I haven't tried it)
• In 2007 Wonka offered a Nerds rope which was an expensive but a really great roof trimming.
• Sticks of gum cut up into squares make nice roof tiles and are good for signs as well (you can write on them with food color markers.
Essential Recipes
• Martha Stewart's Recipe for Gingerbread House Dough (which also includes instructions on making a kit to give as a gift)
• Recipe for Royal Icing (another version complete with video!)
• Meringue Powder to make Royal Icing
• Or Royal Icing Powder
• The Food Network's Christina's Gingerbread Dough Recipe
• Bobby Flay's Gingerbread House Recipe
Books
A List of Books on Building & Making Gingerbread Houses
Other Sites of Interest
• Wilton's Gingerbread House Decorating Contest which also has a page on the History of Gingerbread and lots of photos of the winning houses
• Bob Vila's How-to Build a Gingerbread House
• Gingerbread House Patterns and Templates as well as a large gallery of photos of gingerbread houses.
• An article in the Orange County Register on Gingerbread Houses with lots of basic recipes and tips (including a recipe for making your own corn syrup glazing for windows.
• HGTV's Winter Gingerbread Houses
• A YouTube food video on how to make a gingerbread house from scratch.
• A .pdf file on building a Moonin Gingerbread House (a small house with a tower) with complete instructions and templates.
