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Last weekend, my daughter and I made gingerbread houses. We’ve made them from scratch before and were prepared for the amount of time it would take to complete them. Can you say 5 hours this time around!!! Yip, from start to finish, that’s what it took us.
I was up for the challenge and found a great recipe at About.com. The only thing I changed from the instructions was to use a lot of flour on the counter before rolling out the dough. I found the dough stuck fairly easy without the additional flour. Other then that, their gingerbread recipe and “cement icing” recipes are superb! Whatever shape you cut out is pretty much the shape the cooked gingerbread will be. Rare in a gingerbread recipe!
Here’s a picture of my daughter’s house…
Candy Cane Igloo House, complete with wafer outhouse. See the crescent moon?
And a picture of my house…
Gingerbread house with Lego candy front steps. The roof pieces are always a bugger to get them to stay in place, so I used candy cane sticks to prop up the front roof piece.
I got a little “candy happy” when I bought the candy. We only used half of it. Oh well, ’tis the season to have Christmas candy!
We'll be eating candy for months at this rate. Perhaps I'll take some to work to get ride of it.
It was a lot of fun to make the gingerbread houses with my daughter. I spent a lot of time preparing for the assembly – buying the candy, putting them in bowls, making the dough, figuring out what shapes we wanted and baking it, which took the most time.
I think the houses look great together.
Fun, fun, fun!!!
LESSON LEARNED: Don’t buy so much candy next time.
It’s too pretty to eat. I’ve always wanted to learn how to make a gingerbread house. I may try it one day when I have lots of time. Great job.
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MsWonka replied: — December 11th, 2009 @ 8:13 PM
Hi Rhonda! Well if you do try it, use the recipe I linked to in this post. It’s a winner. you are right, also do it when you have LOTS of time. We spend over 5 hours on these two houses BUT it was VERY rewarding to do from start to finish. Thanks for stopping by.
I love this project! Yours turned out fabulous!!
We do this at our house too — from scratch as well. It’s one of those fun traditions I started when David was a toddler. It is a wonderful way to get rid of straggler Halloween candies!!
Another fun holiday project is to decorate tangerines/clementines with whole cloves.
They smell great and look cool.
Thanks for sharing
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MsWonka replied: — December 11th, 2009 @ 8:15 PM
Hi Kim! It’s GREAT to hear from you! Yes, this was an absolute BLAST to do. Good idea to use Halloween candy too! I love your tangerine and whole clove idea. Sounds very Martha Stewart-ish and perhaps I have seen these before in one of her books. I bet they do smell wonderful.
Take care Kim!
Going to try our first one this year, wish us luck.
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MsWonka replied: — December 16th, 2009 @ 5:56 AM
YAY! Let me know how it turns out Sandy!
These are so adorable!! Great job!
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MsWonka replied: — December 27th, 2009 @ 2:58 PM
Thanks! They both took an insane amount of time to do. But they were also VERY FUN!
Just copied and pasted the recipe and I’m going grocery shopping today or tomorrow so we can start on our gingerbread CASTLE soon. *sigh* Why do I get myself into these tasks that are so complicated when I have so little skills? LOL
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cute, cute, cute.
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