Gingerbread house – Construction process

At this time of year a tradition in many houses is making a gingerbread house that will last. Sometimes ours lasts for a few weeks, sometimes a few months! In this case because of some last minute things we had to take care of, we got a kit from the grocery store. Its sort of like getting a prefab house or in this case maybe a mobile home.

My son was very eager to build this so we set up on the dining room table (also known as the building site) to take stock of what we had available.

The advantage with these sorts of kits is you don’t really need a lot of specialized equipment- no power tools, no concrete trucks or even hammers (unless you get particularly frustrated!)

Nonetheless building the house requires a strong foundation. You start with the footings seen here as a thick layer of icing (otherwise known as glue).

Then you insert the walls into the foundations until they have stuck down and don’t move around.

You can put the other two walls in and make sure that the entire thing is square, so that when the roof goes on, the roof panels will not slide off.

As the roof goes on you can start to contemplate the decorations – my son decided a minimalist approach would be best so we stuck to just the key decorative candy.

Gumdrops, gummies and of course the hard candies for the mistletoe over the front door.

So there it is all ready to display! I wish that all houses went together so quickly, but really it would be hard to live in a gingerbread house. What would happen in the rain?

 

Happy holidays!