Nothing lights up a child's eyes like the sight of a gingerbread house at Christmas. They love to help make them, too. Making gingerbread houses are fun and messy, but they are one of the best decorations in the house. You can put one together quickly, or you can take you're time and have a gingerbread castle masterpiece. Get a bunch of different candies, and make this edible, delightful project this holiday season.
1. Make a pattern for your house with cardboard. You can make the house look any way you want, but a standard house has two walls with peaks, two flat side walls and two roof pieces. Your chimney will be one piece shorter than the other, and the two side pieces will be angled. You will only need one pattern piece per different wall or chimney.
2. Roll out your dough on a piece of wax paper covered with a dusting of flour. Dust the top with flour, and roll out to 1/4 inch thick. Use a sharp knife to cut out all the pieces you need to make your house. You can cut out for a door and window or use decoration to form them later. Place them on a cookie sheet, and bake at 350 degrees. Take your smaller pieces out in about 6 or 7 minutes and the larger ones at 10 to 11 minutes. When the edges start to darken, they are done. Place your pieces on a wire rack, and let them cool. The pieces need to be completely cooled off and hard, you may want to wait until the following day to put them together.
3. Cover a tray with foil and start to build your house. Put icing on the tray where you are going to put your house. It doesn't have to be just at the bottom of the pieces--put it all over so the pieces will stick in it. Fill a pastry bag with white icing. If you don't have a pastry bag, use a plastic sandwich bag and cut the corner off at an angle. Squeeze the icing onto one side of a wall, and stand it up in the icing on the tray. Put the next wall in the icing on the first wall, and work your way around, gluing all the wall together with the icing. Now put the icing on the top of the walls, and put on half of your roof. Put icing on the peak of the roof, and put on the other half. Go over your joints again with icing, making sure they will stay together. Put your chimney together with icing, and stick on the roof.
4. Cut rounded-edge crackers in half, put icing on the backs, and place them on the roof for shingles, starting at the bottom of the roof. Press down lightly so you don't cave in the roof. Put more icing at the top where the flat edges join. Use your icing to put on the candies and decorate. A common gingerbread house has gum drops around the edges of the roof and icing around the doors and windows. You can use candy canes to highlight your door or run a bead of small candies around it. Try to get some icing to hang off the corner of the roof to look like ice. Be creative and have fun with it.
5. Crush Oreo cookies until they are really small pieces. Mix the crushed cookies in with the chocolate icing, and place around the outside of the house. Use the white icing to make snow drifts against one side of the house. Put some Christmas tree lolly pops in the yard by cutting their sticks down and sticking them in the yard mixture. Create a gum drop walkway up to your house. When you are finished with all the decoration, let the house sit and dry. Don't leave it in your kitchen, because the heat and humidity from cooking will make it take longer to dry.
