Gingerbread house making party, Dec. 2013

It's that winter wonderland season of the year again and that means it's time for...a gingerbread house decorating party! We had a similar party a few years back that was loads of fun. I made up all of the houses in the days before and then friends and family came over for the decorating (candy-overload!).

here's my house

The recipe was a "structural" recipe, so not good for eating, however I did make some cookies that folks could decorate and eat...or just eat. The gingerbread house recipes can be found here, the icing recipe here, and the Christmas cookies can be found in this post.

I find that this is a good project to do over several days - make the dough and bake the house pieces one day and then assemble the houses the next day.

Here are my photos of the process and of everyone's houses.

the dough was a bit tough to roll out but microwaving it until warm
made it much softer and easier to manage

one house, ready to bake

the house pieces stacked and ready to assemble

beat the icing until stiff peaks form

keep the tip covered with a wet towel so it doesn't dry out

for the house "platforms" I used cardboard squares covered with foil

voila, a pretty silver base

now, time to assemble...icing is piped along the edges and stuck together
on the base

cans are useful to hold the pieces in place while they dry

one house done...11 more to go...OMG!

it looks like a small gingerbread village

houses and cookies...almost ready for guests

the houses and snacks laid out for the pickin'

getting ready for decorating!

so much candy!

And now...the parade of houses:

a bit hard to see, but I gave my snowman a tiny carrot nose
...it was all shriveled up by the next day

Bye for now...

Gingerbread house making party, Dec. 2010

My sister-in-law (who also loves to cook) and I hosted a gingerbread house making party for adults and kids. We had nine adults and three kids...so it was mostly for adults ;)

Two days before the party I made the gingerbread dough and baked the house pieces (scroll down for links to recipes). I wanted there to be a variety of house sizes and shapes so I used about 7-8 different patterns. I think I made 10 or 11 houses total. The hardest part was keeping all the pattern pieces together as you're baking.

baked house pieces, cooling

after they were baked and cooled, I put each house in a bag until we assembled them the next day

more houses, waiting to be built

The next day, sis-in-law and I assembled all of the houses.

assembled houses just crying out for some decoration

another view of the houses

cute little mini house

Luckily my cats weren't interested in gingerbread so they left the assembled houses alone overnight. The next day was the decorating party! It takes a loooong time for the icing to dry so that's why we did all of the assembly before the party and then just had everyone decorate their own house to take home. I used a piece of cardboard, covered in tinfoil, as the base and "glued" the house to the base.

The houses could have been eaten, however I used a "structural" dough recipe so they would be stronger, so they were hard as rocks and probably would have broken a tooth! To this end, on the day of the party, I also made some gingerbread people and sugar cookies that could be decorated and eaten (and wouldn't break a tooth).

gingerbread and sugar cookies, ready for decorating (and yummy sushi, made by sis-in-law)

the decorations - so much candy!

The final products. Everyone's houses lined up and looking delicious!

cute!

more houses

Here are a couple of houses I made for Christmas 2009. I was doing dinner at our house, for the family, and made and iced a small house for each place setting. I did it all in one night so it was kind of a nutso (i.e. exhausting) project, especially since I was cooking a full English dinner in honor of my British hubby - for 7 people - the next day!

two of the houses from xmas 2009

Recipes:
gingerbread house dough - this recipe is great. The only thing I changed is to use molasses instead of corn syrup (because all of the pictures on this site were too light-colored and I wanted a nice dark brown house). I also added traditional gingerbready spices (ginger, cinnamon, cloves) so they'd smell as good as they looked.
icing - I used the wrong amount of powered sugar - and didn't realize what I had done wrong until the next day - so my icing, when building the houses, was too runny and took a really long time to set up.
google "free gingerbread house patterns" for loads of free patterns to download

Bye for now...