Festival Girl: How To Make A Gingerbread House

Thursday, February 3, 2011

How To Make A Gingerbread House

So this is a little late considering Christmas is now officially over, so maybe I am in some kind of Chirstmas-is-over denial.

Step 1: Cheat and buy a pre-made box with all the gingerbread house bits already pre-baked and cut for you. Ahem, correct, this is what I did.

Step 2: Instructions from the box say to soften the gingerbread a bit by putting some water on a tray, placing the biscuits on top (not submerged) on a low heat, just to soften the bread so its easier to handle. However, I decided that was too much effort and still mad at my oven for burning my last baking brownie effort. So, I just popped the kettle on and hovered the bread over the steam.

Step 3: Making the icing sugar is really easy, all you need is some an egg, some water and the icing sugar mix. Beat it together so its not to runny, but more like a glue like consistency.

Make sure to hold the pieces in place for a few seconds until they hold. Once in place, use a few tooth picks to help keep the walls up until they dry, usually an hour or two is sufficient.

Step 4: Inspect the pieces and lay them flat and put them in their assembly outline.

Step 5: If you bought your gingerbread house in a box (like me) some of the pieces may have broken in transit. Not to worry, there is a very easy way to fix these. Just use the icing to glue the bits back together.

Step 6: Start gluing the bread pieces together

Step 7: Add all the trimmings; lollies, candies, chocolates, sugar figurines and don't forget to dust the house finally with a fine layer of icing sugar through a sifter. This adds a magical snow like look since icing sugar is like food glitter and is really good to cover up any icing related boo boos. Also, I decided to make my own door, it was a bit short, but I tried to (unsuccessfully) cover it up with icing and cut off gingerbread.

I was convinced my house would fall apart but the icing was surprising strong. Can you see the cutie hiding inside? Oh, also, do remember to remove the toothpicks, as it should dry in an hour or so.