Gingerbread Houses

My true love gave to me.... gingerbread houses for school parties.

This tradition started four or more years ago when I spent all day making a gingerbread house. At the end of the day I physically felt sick from all the sugar and could not even face looking at the thing! I decided my only child at school, should take it along and share it with the class to get rid of it!

And here I am still making them. This morning they took them to school for their break up party. All the kids were ooohhh and ahhhing so I secretly think my girls enjoy that ;)

To have everything ready for gingerbread houses {and other holiday baking} I start buying a few items each week from October onwards. Things like different lollies, bags of pure icing sugar, condensed milk, choc chips, cooking butter, gingerbread house kits etc all start appearing in my trolley and I hide bags of cooking ingredients all over the house :)

I felt a little bad that I don't really let the kids help. I find making gingerbread houses quite hard. It takes a lot of concentration from me and I can't have the distraction from the kids {the little ones watched a movie} So to make up for it, we are going to make another one on Monday night and let the kids go for it. I would love to be organised enough to make individual houses for them all to decorate. One day!!

I have a low attention span so I make my gingerbread houses in stages. Otherwise it takes all day and I.AM.OVER.IT! An hour or two here and there seems so much more manageable to me. I also don't include the kids in the first few steps as they don't have the patience and are otherwise all up in my business asking 'when will it be ready' because really, sticking the lollies on is all they care about {and eating it}

My steps are:

If I am baking the gingerbread {I didnt this year - These were kits from Coles and Woolworths} I make the dough and roll it out between baking paper. Draw the house shapes on the paper and cut the shapes out. Freeze the dough and you are done for the day.

Cook dough and let cool. Making a big batch of Royal Icing ( I do two egg whites, 2 tsp lemon juice, One 500g bag of pure icing sugar -I used three batches to make these houses) stick house together and hold with some string. {Allow to set so it is nice and strong - I put a fan blowing on mine this year to help it set} I then cover it all up and leave it for the night.

Next day I decorate the house. This is the step children can be added to.


Enjoy looking at your gingerbread house, or if you're like me, send the thing far away where crazy children will devour it in minutes flat {one year the teacher commented the kids were like ants. There wasnt a bit left of the thing, even the icing all over the plate was gone}