Using an empty milk or juice carton, graham crackers and royal icing, create an adorable gingerbread house with your kids. This is so easy and so much fun. Making these has become a tradition at my house.
Approximate Time: 1 to 1 1/2 hours
Make Royal Icing by beating together 3 egg whites until foamy. Add 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar. Add one whole box of powdered sugar and beat until stiff. Place icing in a pastry bag or a plastic baggie with the end cut off. Use the icing to "glue" the carton to a square of cardboard for the base. Glue graham crackers to the prepared carton. Continue placing crackers on all sides. Place a thick "bead" of icing where the roof tops meet.
Decorate house by pushing small candies, pretzels, cookies, etc. into wet icing. Spread icing all around the "yard" of the house and use gum drops for bushes, pretzels for fences and anything else you can think of. Just be creative and have fun. When finished, use a sifter to dust the entire house and yard with powered sugar to resemble snow. Let the houses dry until icing is hard. Enjoy!
By Momof1 from Wilkesboro, NC
This page contains the following solutions.
When putting together a gingerbread house for Christmas, use peanut butter as the "mortar"; it works far better than the recommended royal icing.
Gingerbread houses are HARD to make and way too tempting for kids to eat candy prematurely so I substituted the candy for dried bananas, dried apple rings, dried strawberries, plus plain and colored Cheerios for my twin grandsons to decorate their pre made houses with. You could "glue" on the pieces with organic peanut butter too!
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I need a good recipe for ginger bread for a gingerbread house. A nice hard gingerbread, not soft and thick.
Thanks in advance.
Valery from Cranford, NJ
I used this recipe this past Christmas and it worked great and smelled fantastic all the way through the holidays. This isn't traditional gingerbread, but it's great to use. You don't have to refrigerate it for too long, it rolls out thin, and bakes into sturdy cookies to make the walls and roof.
Also, I'm putting in a recipe for 'icing glue' that I found on the web. It sets fast and is hard as concrete. We made 8 houses and none of them crumbled or fell apart.
Ingredients
Instructions
Combine flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Cream brown sugar and butter together in a large bowl. Add the egg and beat until fluffy. Add the dry ingredients gradually and mix until combined.
Divide the dough in two halves. Flatten each half and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two baking sheets. Lightly flour a work surface and your rolling pin. Roll out each dough piece until very thin. Cut cookies with a cookie cutter, roll out remaining dough and cut again. Repeat with the second dough piece.
Put cookies on the baking sheets and bake until the edges start to darken, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool.
Decorate any way you like.
In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until they begin to foam. Add the cream of tartar and beat until the whites are stiff but not dry. gradually beat in the icing sugar, beating for about 5 minutes until it reaches spreading consistency. Keep it covered and refrigerate until needed. Dries very fast.
I am looking for directions for the Woman's Day Magazine Mini Gingerbread House. It is from the late 1980's or early 1990's.
FYI
Found this site on Google, it's probably what you are looking for.
womansday.ninemsn.com.au/
I've been doing this for years with grand kids,take two full length graham crackers, with serrated knife carefully cut corners off one short edge of each to form a pointed top. Take two half crackers and glue(royal icing) to tall pointed crackers ( the bottom half leaving the pointed half clear for roof)take two halves and glue to the top edges for roof.
Thank you very much for trying but when Im looking for is mini gram cracker gingerbread house ornaments and this was a recipe that was in the womens day magazine in the 1980s probably late 80s when my kids were young. They lasted around 6 years and I want to make them with my grandchildren so they can carry on the tradition thanks, Linda in Ohio
