How to Design Your Own Gingerbread House
Gingerbread houses are a classic and long-beloved holiday tradition combining both baking and miniature crafting. While houses can be made from kits or plans, the real fun and creativity comes in designing your own. A good gingerbread house design is made up of many elements, including a good recipe, a sound and aesthetically-pleasing structural design, and interesting use of candy decorations. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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1
Choose a good gingerbread recipe. Look up some recipes that are specifically designed for house building (check out the links in "resources" to help you get started) and bear in mind that "gingerbread house" is actually somewhat inaccurate; real gingerbread is often soft and squishy, and what gets used to build houses is actually large sheets of soft gingerbread cookies.
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2
Make a sample batch in the largest sheets you can and see what heights of structures you can create without anything falling over; if a piece can stand on its edge, with assistance, without crumbling, that's a safe bet for height, since it'll be reinforced by additional sides later. Check also to make sure the bread stands up well even if you cut a few window holes in it.
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3
Sketch the house on paper. Do separate sketches for each side of the house detailing the shapes and designs you want to create. Don't worry about measurements, just make artistic decisions about what you want your house to include in terms of basic shapes and numbers of doors and windows.
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4
Convert the sketch into plans. Use the tests you did in step 2 as a guide for how tall you can make your house and adjust your other measurements accordingly. If in doubt, err on the side of smaller, especially if you plan to decorate the house with a lot of candy (especially dense hard candy) that will add extra weight. Use graph paper or a ruler to measure the heights and widths of each side and make sure they line up correctly with all walls of the same height and equal widths positioned opposite one another. Create a pattern for each side that you can use to cut out shapes from baked sheets of gingerbread.
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5
Plan the candy decorations. If you have a specialty candy store in your area, take a visit to look for inspiration (especially if there are details on your house that you haven't decided how to create, yet). Decide whether you want to stick to old-fashioned candy (such as candy canes, peppermint, gum drops and lollipops) or if you want to include some more contemporary candy creations. Old-fashioned candy will give your gingerbread house a more classic look, but more variety will make it more interesting and give you a bigger color and texture palette.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit gingerbread house image by Ancello from Fotolia.com
