December 24, 2016

Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 3 自製薑餅屋

Make your own, homemade, recipe, hansel and gretel, Gingerbread House,step by step, guide, 自製, 薑餅屋, royal icing, decoration, how to
The back of our gingerbread house

Dear readers, this is the last day!  I have to admit it, this little gingerbread house took longer to do (and a caused a bit of nervous hair tearing) than I thought it would...but what can I say, it was worth it.

There's nothing quite like a house made completely of candy and cookies, not when I was a little girl reading over and over again the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel and the little candy house they found nestled in the woods, and not even now when I'm all grown up and seen, well, lots of strange and wonderful things.  

When my little girl and I finally finished our little gingerbread house and it was sitting so pretty on our table...it was just the feeling of magic...I felt almost as if we were transported to that fairy forest, looking through the trees, eyes big with wonder, peeking at a house delightfully  and completely made of candy, with a wicked wee witch hiding inside...
We mixed and baked the gingerbread house shapes according to our downloadable templates in our post Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 1.  

We constructed the gingerbread house on Make Your Own Gingerbread House | Day 2.  

Today on Day 3 we finally decorate our gingerbread house with candies of all sorts!  This is the best part!

Make Your Own Gingerbread House Step by Step Instructions

Day 3: Decorate your house!

Gingerbread House Decoration
Decoration time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups royal icing (see our recipe here)
  • Assorted candies

Directions:

Your basic gingerbread house is assembled and the house joints are dry.  Now it's time to decorate!

Let the royal icing you made on Day 2 come back up to room temperature.  If the icing has separated a bit, just stir it back together.  Fill up your small squeeze bottles with thick royal icing.

Make your own, homemade, recipe, hansel and gretel, Gingerbread House,step by step, guide, 自製, 薑餅屋, royal icing, decoration, how to
Candies for decoration

Prepare the candies you want to decorate with.   Part of the fun of the gingerbread house is the shopping for the many candies that might be useful for eating decorating.  And having a house full of candies, nom, nom!  We went here, there, and everywhere to gather all the candies that we thought would look pretty on our gingerbread house.

The only rule to mind is to use candies that are not affected by humidity, so look for candies like gummy candiesM&MsSkittlesgum dropssour belts and licorice laces.   As for candy canes and peppermint swirls, only use if they are shrink wrapped in plastic.  Otherwise these will get sticky and start melting downwards in gooey drips...NOT what you want. (Our unwrapped peppermints slowly got gooey after a few days...ughh.)

Make your own, homemade, recipe, hansel and gretel, Gingerbread House,step by step, guide, 自製, 薑餅屋, royal icing, decoration, how to
Icing outlines and patterns highlight windows and doors, icicles hang roof eaves

With your thick royal icing add outlines and patterns to the windows and doors.  Use thinned out royal icing (for tips on thin and thick icing see post for Day 2) to add snow along the edges of the roof and on the roof peak.  Make icicles coming down from the snowy roof edges by pulling downward with icing bag while squeezing thin icing out at the same time.  

Let the icing decorations dry for a few hours before starting the candy decorations.

Make your own, homemade, recipe, hansel and gretel, Gingerbread House,step by step, guide, 自製, 薑餅屋, royal icing, decoration, how to

Once your icing decoration is dry, it's time to candify your gingerbread house!  Oh what fun it is, to decorate your house, hey!  Just stick everything on with thick royal icing.  It's like being a kid all over again, the bright colors, the animals, the simple shapes, the glue sticking all over your fingers and your hair.  

Just let your five year old self go and cover that little house with as many colors, patterns and candy shapes as you can fit on it!

Tip:  Make smoke come out of your chimney with a bit of cotton batting fluffed out or even a couple of cotton balls fluffed out.

Make your own, homemade, recipe, hansel and gretel, Gingerbread House,step by step, guide, 自製, 薑餅屋, royal icing, decoration, how to

For the landscape around the house we spread a layer of thinned out royal icing all around to make it look like snow.  Then we added candy shrubs and christmas trees cookies and a candy walking path to the front door.  It's really was like being 5 years old again...
And done...  It was just an awesome thing to do for both myself and my little girl.  We had so much fun...what a way to kick off the Christmas season.  

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!

Make your own, homemade, recipe, hansel and gretel, Gingerbread House,step by step, guide, 自製, 薑餅屋, royal icing, decoration, how to


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