Let's Make Gingerbread Houses

Sometime just after Thanksgiving, I decided one of our Advent(ish) activities would be to make gingerbread houses with the kids. And to be honest, it really wasn't a surprise that it didn't actually happen until the week of Christmas, the final touches being placed on the houses on Christmas Eve morning.

But of course, I refused to buy one of those kits. I mean, REALLY. Why spend $9.99 on something I could spend HOURS mixing, designing, baking, cutting, buying candy, and constructing instead?!

This was the gist:

• Day 1: make the gingerbread dough and refrigerate overnight; draw and cut out the pattern
• Day 2: roll out the dough and cut the house pieces, bake and cool, make the house foundation
• Day 3: make the first batch of royal icing, assemble the house pieces and allowing to set a few hours before putting the roof on; then let them set overnight
• Day 4: Decorate!

I had a lot of fun making them, let me taste childhood again. I plan to do them again next year with (possibly) some more involvement from the kids in the making and baking of them. I didn't use any one recipe (of course I didn't, that would be too simple), instead combining and tweaking a couple to get what I wanted. To save me some search time next year, I've reproduced and tweaked so I can find the recipe on my own blog. You can find the MotherhoodSquared Gingerbread Recipe here.

1. Making dough, 2. cutting house pieces, 3. icing and assembly, 4. leting the houses set, 5. candy decorations, 6. little elf at work, 7. bigger elf at work, 8. gingerbread houses