I LOVE decorating gingerbread houses! Probably not a huge shocker since I decorate cakes… but gingerbread houses are different because it’s so much less pressure and just fun!
You know what I don’t love about gingerbread houses??
That you have to plan ahead. I am SO not good at planning ahead. It usually starts off great, with the kids opening their Advent calendars in the morning and seeing that our activity of the day is gingerbread houses. They get excited, say they can’t wait till after school and walk out the door with goofy grins. At some point during the day, it turns into me frantically trying to find a store in my small town that sells gingerbread houses, realizing there is no such store, trying to bake my own and get them all nice and “glued” together so they’re dry by the time the kids get home. Which usually doesn’t end up happening because warm gingerbread sides don’t hold too well when all it’s doing is melting your icing. (who has time for it to cool when you waited till the last minute?)
So I was pretty tickled when I heard about this gingerbread house from the Candy Cottage that you don’t have to bake or plan ahead in any way!
They come in sheets {see shiny plastic bag covering them that should have told me to turn the flash off}, and then you just pop them together and you get a cute little house like the right of the picture!
Some icing and a little bit of time later… and you have a GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!
The chimney, roof and front doors are made out of chocolate wafers (the kind that you make ice cream sandwiches out of). The pieces for the roof were cut using a small paring knife and then “glued” on one by one with icing.
The house is covered in graham cracker sheets and the windows have little pretzel “leading” with their one wreathes, because it’s Christmas after all!
The wreath above the front door was made on a gingersnap cookie and then “glued” to the house with even more icing!
And don’t ever forget the back of your house! It doesn’t like to be ignored, so it got a swag treatment of it’s own, plus a Christmas tree! The trim at the roof line are mini marshmallows.
