Gingerbread houses

We made our gingerbread houses a couple weekends ago, but I just barely finished putting them together last night. You see the icing wasn't as stiff as it was last year (I went by memory, which is pretty spotty these days), so it was strong enough for the candy and the walls, but the roofs kept falling. I looked up the recipe I used last year that worked so well and discovered that I was supposed to beat it for 7-10 minutes. That's what I forgot, and once I did that, it worked GREAT.

We made them on a Saturday afternoon, after Dave, Spencer and Dallin got back from a campout (Tyler couldn't go because he was sick) and before we went out on a date. Tyler felt totally better that day, and we had fun buying all the candy together while Brennan was at his primary class party.


The great thing about gingerbread houses is that they always turn out great, no matter who makes them. Candy is colorful and beautiful, and you almost can't mess it up.


Some poeple take longer than others and have to be hurried along.



We had several lessons on how to use the icing bag correctly so that it doesn't all squirt out the back. Dallin is demonstrating excellent technique here.

Our favorite candies this year were the old-fashioned ones from Michael's. Spencer has recently discovered that most candy is too sweet and artificial-tasting, but those ones were not. He must be growing up!

I was only going to make 4 houses, but I had extra gingerbread and decided to make an extra house just in case. It's a good thing I did, because Levi was rather insistant about making his own. He immediately broke a wall and starting eating it, but we "glued" it back together and taught him to put the candy on it instead.

He was the first one done! He was rather proud of himself, and he's always pointing at it and saying, "My house!"

I had so much extra dough that I even cut out tons of gingerbread men, Christmas trees and snowmen to embellish the houses and eat. I did something different this year - I cut out the shapes before I baked them, which was much easier and worked out great.

Now our mantle looks finished and beautiful. It looked rather odd with all the roof-less houses on it.