Friday, September 9, 2011

Gingerbread House

For this project you could buy a simple box kit but what’s the fun in that!? Before Brigid came over to work on the gingerbread house she found a recipe for making gingerbread.  She made the batch at her house before coming over. We also began to plan dimensions for the house. You can find dimensions on the internet or books from Barnes and Nobles. Since this was our first one we figured we would go for a basic rectangular shaped home. This requires a little bit of math and thinking. We also made sure we had a small knife to use as a cutting tool for our windows and doors.

As you can see from this image we had cut out all the windows and doors before putting up the walls. We also needed a baking board which you can get at any local party supply story to attach our house to. In order to get the walls to stands together you need to have frosting ready to use as a glue substitute. While the frosting hardens you need items such as soup cans to support the walls.



While we waited for the walls to firm up we began working on the roof. We used necco wafers as shingles. To get them to stay on the roof we again used the frosting as a glue substitute.


Once the house was strong enough we attached the roof using the same techniques. If you look inside the window you can see that we made curtains!



Our house was finally complete once we attached a chimney, shutters and a door. The door was made by attaching peppermint candies to a piece of gingerbread. The shutters were made with gingerbread pieces decorated with melted colored chocolates. The chimney was made to match the foundation. This look was created with pebble looking chocolates. We had a personal landscaper, Alicia, design a skating rink with rock candy. She also created a front walk with swirly twislers. The bushes in the front are Hershey kisses dipped in colored chocolate. Take a look at the flower boxes in front of the windows. The boxes were made from liquorish. The flowers, and also the door handle were made out of dots. The snow man, as well as the snow on the roof was made from fondant. See how creative you get! Too beautiful to eat! Well that’s what we thought. The dogs thought differently…….


Hershey & Boston in the crate after destroying our gingerbread house!

Don't worry, the snowman survived!

Note to self and to all of you… Never leave a gingerbread house unattended unless you have it in a safe location away from the animals. And no, a high counter is not considered a safe place!


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