Homemade Gingerbread House - Geneva,IL

We did one over Thanksgiving break. It was fun and not THAT much harder than the kits.http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_a_ginger... That's the site we used. And I chose this site because it was referenced in three blogs I read.

The recipe worked really well, but I did have to add just a bit of water because otherwise, it was a bit crumbly. Someone on here gave me the good advice to put the template back on top of the house while the pieces were still warm and trim for sharp edges.

We didn't have to make any sort of structure at all. We made the dough two mornings before THanksgiving. The day before Thanksgiving we cut it all out and baked it (didn't take very long at all...maybe an hour. I just cut the pattern out and put that directly on the cookie). After it cooled we glued it together. We used the Wilton recipe for frosting. We just went slow. Glues two sides together. Then the other two. Then put those four sides together. ANd then we used the frosting to fill in any gaps or holes. We used Halloween candy to decorate.

I thought it was going to be a much harder task than it was. When I asked about the dough on here, I had a few people suggest I just go get the kit. In the spirit of full disclosure...I am a cake decorator and I do a lot of baking, but I have never before made a gingerbread house. WE have bookmarked the page and we will make another next year. For us, it was a great project.

Good luck!

The mom of an old friend of mine used to make them every year (I've done it a couple times since becoming a mom). Use parchment paper to cut out your walls, ceiling, doors, etc... for a pattern (you can google the drawings). Gingerbread recipes are easy to find. Roll out the dough, use the parchment cutouts to make the cookies and then bake. Immediately after they get out of the oven, be sure to use the same cutouts to trim the cookies (they spread when you bake them, making them more "round" than you want). This will ensure that they have straight walls, etc....

Making them from scratch is time consuming, expensive and can be aggravating, but it's so worth it! :) I would bake the parts of the house ahead of time and have each complete house's parts gathered for each child, that way they walls, ceilings, etc.. don't get mixed up.

Have fun!!!

Are you a baker?
I ask, because I consider myself a pretty decent cook and baker. I can prepare and roll out cookie and pie dough pretty much like a pro.
So a few years ago I actually took a gingerbread house making class, thinking it would be fun.
OMG it was HARD!
The pieces had to be very precise (shape and thickness) and I found the dough very hard to work with, and a few of my walls cracked and crumbled when I went to assemble my house :(
I'm not trying to discourage you at all, but at least do a trial run before having the kids over.
Honestly, THEY won't care if you use graham crackers, and it will be easier for them to work with. Plus they can build a whole village if they want, fairly easily!
Just make sure you get a good, genuine icing recipe. Store bought, pre made frosting is not hard/sticky enough (PM me if you want, I can probably find the recipe in my baking binder.)

how old are these kids?

You will need to prep the Gingerbread ahead of time.

This means making the dough, letting it set.. maybe in the fridge. Roll it out. Cut out the shapes. Then bake it, then let it totally cool.

Then you will want a structure to support it, because trying to put those walls together is hard, even for a professional baker. Keeping them standing is also hard, if not balanced correctly.

Then you will need make a lot of icing. Have the bags and tips for them to use.

Let them practice.. Again, it takes adult hands a lot of practice to get the hang of controlling the icing.

Wow, I know you already responded that you were going to try it, but I thought I would add my two cents anyway. My kids and I finished our second annual gingerbread house decorating last weekend. They are 6 and 3. We had a blast. I did not find making the house difficult at all (even after my 3 year old broke both pieces of the roof in half and I had to "glue" them back together with frosting). I am not a perfectionist at all though, so it doesn't bother me that there is a bottle of barbeque sauce in the middle of the house that held the two roof pieces up as the frosting that held them together dried.

I used the templates from King Arthur Flour on this pdf to make my house: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/baking/documents/gingerbre.... I couldn't use their recipe because my husband and son are allergic to milk, so I used a dairy free recipe that I found on-line. I cut my pieces out after they baked. I used a big serrated bread knife and used a sawing motion. I used the royal icing recipe from the pdf for the icing and it is an excellent glue. I didn't flavor it since we have no intention of eating our house. We did eat the extra cut out gingerbread pieces though.

Anyway, I am glad that you are going to attempt it and I am sure that it will go very well.

Cheers,
D.

You are asking for a lot of extra work for yourself, but yes cutting your own is doable. Find a template on line. depending on age of kids you may want to bake the pieces up ahead of time. don't bother with keeping it edible, use a glue gun. Keep it small. trust me. Its really easy for this project to get out of hand.

It is not hard to make your own dough. Make sure you cut the template of shapes before you bake. As long as you don't have to make 10 houses, it should be fine. Each house usually has 6 pieces so it's going to take some time though. But the gingerbread smells SO yummy while baking!!!

It is a HUGE chore to make it and cut it yourself...and as others have said, you really have to be precise.

I LOVE using graham crackers...you can get so creative by just adding on and adding on, and kids love that. We have made some really funky looking gingerbread houses by using graham crackers. They even have "gingerbread" graham crackers out right now.

I have used the frosting in an aerosol can to hold the walls together, but it's too soft and doesn't work well. Homemade buttercream frosting (5 T butter, 3 c. powdered sugar, and a TAD of milk until you get a nice thick frosting) works much better...it's like glue...and if you don't have piping bags you can make your own by snipping a very small corner off a Ziploc bag.

We tried to assemble the pre-made walls one year. Never again. It was well worth the $10 bucks. They don't stay up and therefore you can't decorate it. Total bummer. You said a few boys are coming over - san two boys share one house and decorate together? By the time you buy the ingredients and spend your time, I think you will feel $10 is a bargain, like my family did.

In 1968, when I was in my freshman year in High School, I borrowed the cookbook from the Public Library, that had a photo of a Gingerbread House on the cover (it could have been a cookbook of Christmas recipes), and made the Gingerbread House from scratch, as a project for school. I remember going to Stop & Shop, in downtown Chicago, with my mother, to find all of the candy in the photo. I copied the design on the cover of the cookbook. I developed my own candy designs for houses I made, after that.
The dough required about 18 cups of flour, lots of sugar, honey, and a fragrant selection of spices. The "concrete" consisted of egg whites, tons powdered sugar & cream of tartar, A template design was included in the recipe, and I cut it out, and laid it over the empty cookie sheets, to be sure that there would be room for all of the pieces. The dough was very heavy, and pliable (not sticky) and I rolled it with a rolling pin, to be even thickness (really important) before fitting it into the cookie pan (had about 1" sides).
The result was a beautiful Gingerbread House! The school librarian asked if she could have it, after my project was over, to display in the library window, and surprised me when she purchased the cookbook herself, for the school library window, (she was an 80 year old nun). She kept it and it was displayed every Christmas season, for as long as I kept contact with the school.
After that, I bought the cookbook myself, and baked and assembled at least four more. Two were gifts and the others, people paid me to make them.
The scraps are very tasty! After the Holidays, the cake should be covered with a plastic bag, with a few small air holes, and kept in a cool, dry place over the years. It last and smells wonderful forever!
HINTS: cover a few upside down ice cream cones for pine trees, with the white meringue "concrete" swirled like branches, and sprinkle with green colored sugar or colored sugar shot. Always work quickly with the meringue, as it loses its sheen and hardens like concrete, really fast.