Create a Gingerbread House

When I was about eight a neighbor invited my older sister and me over a week or so before Christmas to join her and her family in making and decorating gingerbread houses. She made large pans of gingerbread, which she cut into parts to form a small house, glued the parts together with icing, and then decorated the house and "yard" with candy and sugar figurines. It was enormously fun, and Even long after Christmas, I still couldn't bring myself to eat any of the gingerbread house, even though it was all quite edible.

I think building and decorating a ginger bread house is a super activity to share with your kids. You can buy kits to assemble and decorate yourself at a lot of grocery stores; the kit typically contains directions, the basic gingerbread house pieces, ready to assemble, and a list of supplies for possible decorations. Alternatively, you can make the gingerbread dough, refrigerate it overnight, roll it out and make the house pieces using templates or stencils. It's more fun to do the entire project yourself, and with the resources of the Web, some cardboard, and a pastry bag, it's loads of fun, and not terribly difficult. In addition, creating the pieces of a gingerbread house for a neighbor, accompanied by some simple instructions is a fun and thoughtful gift.

You bake the pieces of the house, then, once they've cooled, you mortar them together with an icing that's made with egg whites in addition to sugar. You'll want a pastry bag to do this part, though you can make do with a plastic ziplock style freezer bag with asmall hole cut in a bottom corner. It's particularly helpful to have another pair of hands to hold pieces of the house together while you wield the glue gun pastry bag filled with icing.

Once the house is assembled, start thinking about what candies you need to decorate the house and yard. Red hots, chocolate kisses in the tiny and normal size, small gumdrops, and small candy canes are particular favorites; I've seen waffle-cookies and sliced almonds used for roofing tiles, and a variety of clever uses for crushed hard candies and candy canes. Look at pictures for inspiration, talk to your local kids, and see this page for decorating tips.

There's a complete set of recipes, Gingerbread house templates, and assembly instructions here. You can find similar resources for constructing a Gingerbread house here. There's a lovely collection of house templates for various styles of gingerbread houses, and more recipes here. And, finally, I note that Trader Joe's sells a kit, and William Sonoma will make a customized Gingerbread House for you—for a price. There's a fabulous collection of finished gingerbread houses here, for inspiration.