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Expectant Prayers ®

Jennifer Jo Weiss

Making a Prepackaged Gingerbread House

Celeste, Levi, and Zeke had a lot of fun helping with the gingerbread house this weekend!   After years of making my own gingerbread houses I didn't know if I would like using pre-made gingerbread house pieces, but it worked out just fine.  It was a little smaller than I expected, but just right for the kids.  It's easier than making graham cracker houses, too!   I thought a few of you out there may appreciate a how-to description so YOU can make one!  

Prepackaged kits are available at Aldi and Hy-Vee (if you live in KC).  Other stores probably have them, but those are the two stores I saw them at with my own eyes!  Ours came from Aldi and cost around $8.





First thing out of the box, make sure all your pieces will fit together properly.  When I make mine from scratch, I still need to trim sometimes!   If you have to trim, use a serrated knife and cut slowly. 

Upon examination of the boxed contents, I noticed that this particular boxed set did not come with a "floor" piece.  Usually that helps hold the walls up in their proper place.   It's not a problem, but it's really important to make sure you let the gingerbread house dry before working with it too much.

Secondly, prepare a board for your house to sit on.  Cut a piece of cardboard- don't make it too large- and cover it with foil.  Be sure to tape the edges down on the underneath side of the board.  You'll be able to slide the board around.

Now you're ready for construction!  I used my own decorator icing, but you can see a bag of the ready made from the set in the above picture.  I wanted to use my own decorating bags and tips (mainly because I know how my particular icing handles), but if you're just using the kit items, simply cut off a corner of the icing bag and squeeze!

Ask someone to help hold the pieces while you construct or you can use a can from your cupboard.  This set came with some little cardboard separators for the candies, so I used  one of those, plus a can to stabilize the structure until I could get to the back of the house.

Take the front of the house and bead a generous amount of icing along the bottom.   Then take one of the size walls and put icing along the bottom edge and edge that will connect with the front piece. Stand the front of the wall on the board and then add the side wall. Press them together.  The wall should fit behind the front piece, not beside.

Ice the bottom and connecting edge of the second wall and put it into place.  Finally, ice the bottom of the back of the house and the edges of the walls to connect together.  You'll have your rectangular box shape. 

The roof should be piped with icing on the underneath side and on the edge where the two roof pieces will come together.  Simply set into place.  You may need to prop up the roof pieces with something until they can harden into place.  If you don't watch out, your roof can slide off!  You can see in the above picture that we used salt and pepper shakers. 

Allow the structure to harden overnight.

Finish with edge piping along all the edges, bottom, top, etc. and add your candies.  We also added roof details, a lattice heart on the back, etc.

This is what ours looked like....



Front (above) and Back (below).  See the peppermint candy chimney? 
That was Celeste's idea.  We put the icing snow blob on the night before
and then stacked the round candies 4 high. 
It's her favorite part of the house.



So what were the perks?  Cutting down on prep time and saving money on the overall cost!
Any downsides?  One size only, no decorator tips included with the set (we used our own tips to edge and to make the icicles).

By the way, this set also came with two gingerbread people, which the kids decorated and ate.  This house is edible, but we plan on using it just to look at for now... that is if I can keep Zeke out of it.  Yesterday afternoon, I found some candies missing.  He said they were delicious.    (Yes, make sure to keep some candies in a bag when you're done so you can repair if needed).

HAPPY HOUSE BUILDING!



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