Gingerbread House Ideas for Christmas

Recreate your house in gingerbread for a fun holiday tradition

In recent years, gingerbread has mainly taken the form of simple cookies shaped like boys and girls during the Christmas holiday. The art of building intricate and ornate gingerbread houses was once an integral part of holiday traditions in Europe and the United States. With a little bit of work and a lot of imagination and patience, you can bring this tradition back to life by building gingerbread creations of your own during the holiday season.

Recreate Your Own Home

Use gingerbread to duplicate the home where you and your family create Christmas memories. Look for a gingerbread house pattern or template that is close to the style of your home, and build it according to the pattern directions. Be sure to recreate the most prominent features of the house as closely as possible to make the house easily identifiable, such as the color of the home, the types of shingles on the roof and large trees in the yard. If you are a skilled artist, use marzipan to recreate family members and pets to place in the front yard. If not, simply create small gingerbread men to represent family members. Sprinkle a bit of "snow" using confectioner's sugar for a special Christmas centerpiece.

Make a Scene

Take the time to create a gingerbread village scene

Don't stop at just one gingerbread house. Create an entire landscape. Cover a house with thick pretzel sticks to make a log cabin, invert ice cream cones and cover with green-colored royal icing, and make a skating pond out of tin foil for a quaint Christmas scene. Build a Victorian village complete with cobblestone streets or recreate the North Pole.

For a project of this size, planning is key. Bake and cut the gingerbread in advance, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze. Visit your local candy store to determine which candy pieces will work the best for your scene. All pieces of a gingerbread scene are supposed to be edible, so take your time planning so that your construction goes quickly.

Kids' Favorites

If you have young children, create a gingerbread house that reflects their favorite story or characters. Make liberal use of red-and-white stripes for a "Cat in the Hat" house, go high-tech with plenty of primary colors for a "Power Rangers" theme, or place Kermit and Miss Piggy squarely in the middle of Sesame Street. Be sure to add lots of snow, wrapped presents and a large Christmas tree to bring the holiday spirit to your creation.

Miniaturize

Create several small gingerbread houses in different designs, and place them at each table setting at your holiday get-together. Have small clear plastic boxes ready to place the houses in so that your guests can take your creations home with them. For a special treat, make each house reflective of the person receiving it by adding touches that look like his own home. Gingerbread houses that are three-inches tall or less can be set in the branches of your Christmas tree or used as cake toppers for a holiday cake.

References

• BobVila.com: Building a Gingerbread House
• Gingerbread House Heaven: Pictures of Gingerbread Houses

Resources

• Simple Recipes: How to Make a Gingerbread House
• "Gingerbred for All Seasons;" Teresa Layman; 2003
• "Gingerbread: Things to Make and Bake;" Teresa Layman; 1992
• Family Fun Magazine: My First Gingerbread House