Making a homemade gingerbread house can be your next new Christmas family tradition. It’s a great art project for little ones, artistic teens and everyone in between. With some Christmas carols playing in the background and a fire in the fireplace, it can be an afternoon of old-fashioned holiday fun for your family.
Your finished gingerbread house can be the centerpiece on your holiday table.
A gingerbread house connoisseur will make gingerbread walls by baking panels using molds. At the other extreme, there are gingerbread house kits where everything is pre-made for you.
The best of both worlds is making a gingerbread house out of graham crackers, frosting and candy. It’s easy and doesn’t require a lot of prep time before the decorating begins.
The Gingerbread House Frame
Take a cardboard box and cut off the top flaps. Using cardboard pieces from other boxes, make a slanted roof and tape it together with masking tape. Don’t worry about what the box frame looks like – it will be covered with graham crackers and cereal and all the flaws will be hidden.
If you’re going to include a yard with your gingerbread house, set the frame on a large sheet of cardboard or foam board.
The Icing Mortar
You’ll need a thick icing to hold everything onto your house frame. Here’s a recipe for icing that’s easy to spread, but that dries quickly as hard as cement.
Gingerbread House Icing Recipe
This recipe can be doubled for a larger gingerbread house.
- 1 pound powdered sugar
- 3 egg whites
- ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
- Dash of salt
- 7 tablespoons water
Sift together powdered sugar and cream of tartar. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Mix with an electric mixer for about 8 minutes at high speed. Keep the bowl covered with a damp dishtowel while you’re working with it, to keep the icing from hardening in the bowl.
The Siding
Buy two boxes of generic or store brand graham crackers and carefully pull out the unbroken crackers.
Spread some icing on the house frame and press a graham cracker onto it. Don’t push too hard or the graham cracker will break. The more icing you use, the easier the construction will be. Cover the entire frame.
The Roof
Cover the roof with Frosted Mini Wheat cereal for the look of a thatched roof with a dusting of snow. Starting at the bottom of the roof line, spread on a line of icing and place the cereal squares in a line across the bottom. Repeat with a line above, overlapping slightly the row below it, so each layer hangs down over the top of the row below.
The Decorations
Decorate your gingerbread house with candy from the bulk candy section of your grocery store, cake decorations and anything else that’s edible and pretty.
Use your imagination: What foods look like things on your house? You can stack up caramels for a chimney, use a Hershey bar for a door, line up M&M’s for a string of Christmas lights, use a Lifesaver for a door wreath, and post candy canes for lampposts. Other candies perfect for gingerbread house decorations are Skittles, peppermints, gum drops, Tootsie Rolls and Hershey kisses.
