Make a Gingerbread House

first decide on a design for your house or castle. Play around with graham crackers until you have an arrangement that you want to build. Use a serrated bread knife to gently ‘saw’ pieces to fit where necessary ie: the roof peaks. Use icing in a pastry tube to ‘glue’ the pieces together. If the walls are made from more than one cracker, ‘glue’ the pieces and lie the pieces flat to harden before putting the house together. The icing should be thick enough to hold the walls together when you stand them up and ‘glue’ the corners. Let the icing set firmly before adding the roof. The roof can be made 2 ways: 1. cut a piece of poster board or thin cardboard the right size and then use icing to stick white ‘social tea’ cookies or flat candy wafers to it, then place the whole thing on top of your house, or 2. Beginning at the bottom edge of the roof ‘glue’ rows of cookies carefully overlapping them and allowing the icing to harden between adding rows of cookies. Once you have the basic house, add candies of all kinds to decorate it. I usually make these on a foil covered cardboard, then decorate the yard as well. Teddy grahams stuck in icing side by side make a really cute fence. The finishing touch is the ‘icicles ‘ made of icing around the entire roof.


Ornamental Icing
3 egg whites
5 - 6 cups icing sugar
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt
1tsp vanilla

combine eggs, cream of tartar, salt and vanilla, add icing sugar beating continuously.
The icing should form peaks. Add a bit more icing sugar to stiffen it up a bit more if you like. Cover the bowl with a slightly damp cloth to keep the icing from hardening in the bowl while you work.

Caroline