Gingerbread Houses - A Fun Family Tradition

Easy to assemble pre made gingerbread kits are sold everywhere during the holidays. They are a simple and fun task for the whole family.

These are supposed to be easy to put together right? Well not in my house. Both my husband and myself are incapable of putting a gingerbread house together. I'm not sure why. I can do a lot of things - but this isn't one of them. Gingerbread houses have always been a family tradition that I'd like to say we try to keep. Unfortunately in our house ..... assembly usually includes stress, disagreements, and arguments over who gets to put what candy where. But surprisingly that doesn't stop of from attempting to put one together each year.

This year we decided to decorate a train instead of a house. Mainly because most of the pieces are rectangle and there is no pointed roof that can fall in. So the night prior, I took out all of the pieces and had a moment of genius (or I thought it was anyway). I hot glued our gingerbread train together. Yep you read right. I hot glued the train....no one eats it in our house anyway so I figured why not save myself the frustration. The best part is, we could have decorated it almost immediately since the glue dries so fast. The next day we decorated our train with minimal arguments and it didn't fall apart! It was a good year!

It wasn't until our graham cracker house event I had a major breakthrough. These houses were so easy to put together that why not decorate individual houses every year and make a Christmas village? This way we can show our different personalities through our individual houses.

During our event we had an excellent time decorating our houses. Surprisingly not a lot of the candy was eaten. Way to go moms! The housed looked great and were so much fun to make! There were a few roofs that fell in....but its difficult having to make a child wait while the icing dries.

This was the first time that I had made royal icing. The icing worked just like glue and dried pretty quickly. I used the following recipe that I found online:

Ingredients:

• 1 pound sifted confectioners' sugar or more as needed (3 3/4 cups - I needed more)
• 3 large egg whites
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preparation:

1. Place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and combine. Scrape down sides. Turn the mixer to high and beat until thick and very white. Mixture will hold a peak. This should take at least 7-10 minutes. (I am impatient so after a couple of minutes I added some extra icing sugar till the mixture was thick enough that when I tipped the bowl sideways my icing stayed in place)
   
2. When finished, cover with plastic wrap, making sure it touches the royal icing so a crust doesn't form. (Even after sitting in my fridge over night the icing was soft and worked great the next day)

I can't promise that this was the last year I will use hot glue on gingerbread......but I can definitely say I am actually looking forward to making our Christmas village next year!

Here is a picture of our finished train and houses.