Christmas Traditions: Gingerbread Houses - Guest Post from Chocolate on my Cranium

If you haven’t ever heard of the blog Chocolate on my Cranium, now is the time to head over to this amazing ladies blog and start reading. I have followed her blog since I started blogging 5ish years ago! It is wonderful! I am excited to have her on the blog today talking about a fun family tradition they do as a family. These look like so much fun! I always just by the box kits, but this doesn’t look too hard……

Hi! I’m Montserrat and I blog at Chocolate on my Cranium. As the mother of 10 children I love creating family memories, especially at Christmastime. One of our favorite traditions is making gingerbread houses. We began when my two oldest were 2 & 3 years old. It has become a tradition we all look forward to every year. It is always a blast! And now 15 years later it is still as fun as can be!

A couple of years ago we decided we wanted to create a village. Several of the kids made houses, one made a “mansion,” a couple others made some shops and stores (a candy store and The Pink Pig Bookstore), one made a church, and I made the Salt Lake Temple.

We use a basic template I created years ago. The house is just big enough to decorate with plenty of candy but not so big I have gingerbread dough coming out of my ears and I’m baking all day. . . well as much as baking ten gingerbread houses takes. 🙂

Gingerbread House Template (small) pdf

Every child gets their own house to decorate. Nobody has to share! That does make for a lot of baking and candy but ….it’s tradition!

My three year old had help from an older sister. Can you tell she liked to taste the candy before it got put on the house?

Here’s my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe. I cut it out of a Martha Stewart magazine years and years ago. Each recipe of dough will make about 4-5 houses. I make the dough, cut out and bake the pieces the day before our decorating day, and let them sit out overnight to harden up. Each child gets their own to decorate. I give them each their own small ziploc sandwich bag with a corner snipped off filled with royal icing and let them have at it.

Gingerbread Cookies
1 cup margarine, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup molasses
5 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground cloves

Cream together margarine and sugar. Add molasses and mix well. Sift together dry ingredients. With mixer on low speed slowly add dry ingredients and 1/2 cup water to molasses mixture. Mix until smooth. Divide dough into two equal pieces. Flatten each piece into a rectangle. wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour. On floured surface roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with cookie cutters or use template to make gingerbread house pieces. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Makes 4 dozen cookies or 4 gingerbread houses.

Royal Icing
3 TBSP. meringue powder*
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
7 TBSP. water

Beat with electric mixer for 7 minutes or until stiff peaks form. If icing is too thick add 1 tsp. of water at a time until you get better consistency. I usually end up making three batches of this so there is enough for everyone. (We do have nine children after all).

* I buy the Wilton’s Meringue Powder that comes in a can in the cake decorating aisle.

Tips:

♦ I cut up old boxes and cover the pieces with foil to put our houses on.
♦ Assemble the house first and let set for about 15 minutes so the icing has time to harden a little before decorating your house.

The church

♦ Use your imagination to find candies, cookies, cereal, and other edible goodies for your house. We use sugar cones turned upside down for trees, shredded wheat for snowy rooftops, tootsie rolls for a pile of logs outside the house, swirled chocolate chips, gumdrops, red hots, M&M’s, candy canes, wafer cookies, the possibilities are endless.
♦ Don’t stress! Letting each child have their own to decorate however they want is part of the fun. I love seeing the uniqueness of each house each year. It does get messy but that’s okay!

The mansion

♦ Make extra house pieces to use in case someone does happen to break one of theirs. Honestly we’ve only ever had five pieces break in the 15 years we’ve been doing this.
♦ Invite friends over for a grand party! One of my daughter’s birthday is December 18th. For her eighth birthday we had 12 kids gathered round the table making their own gingerbread houses. It was so much fun!

This temple was really fun to do! I just created an outline of the ends with the spires on paper. I cut around that template using a butter knife. The side pieces were just rectangles. I cut the tops using the stem end of a leaf cookie cutter to create the square cut-outs.

I transferred the pieces to foil lined baking sheets and cut out the windows. I used an apple corer to cut out the circles on the side pieces and a butter knife to cut out the long curved windows on the end pieces.

Then I sprinkled broken pieces of blue and purple jolly ranchers (any hard candy can be used). To break the candy place in a ziploc bag and pound away with a hammer or rolling pin. I baked the gingerbread as usual then let it cool completely on the pan before removing.

I softened starburst candy in the microwave for about 7 seconds to mold the Angel Moroni on top. It looks more like a honking duck than an angel blowing a trumpet!