Return of the Gingerbread Houses!

by Amy

Two years ago, Brad went out of town for a week in December.  So, in an effort to distract us from missing the daddy all week, I decided to make a gingerbread house with my kids.  It was hard and my kids were little, so that meant I did all of the baking, cutting, and building and most of the decorating.  But, my kids loved it, so we did it again last year as well.  In November, my kids began asking if we could build houses again this year. And, with Brad's promise to handle the actual building of the houses, I cheerfully agreed!  I had learned a few things not to do over the last few years, so I had had high hopes that this would be the best year yet -- and it was!

In our house we have a rule - No School on Birthdays - so, I decided my birthday would be a fun day to decorate our houses.  (Little did I know, that this would be just the beginning of our three week Homeschool Christmas Vacation!  We haven't homeschooled since!  Jan 3, we're starting back up again!)  That meant on the Monday before, I needed to bake the pieces and have have Brad build the houses.  My engineer husband is awesome!  He took his responsibilities very seriously!

 
Clearly his creativity is coming out as he used can goods, boxes of soup mix, and tape dispensers to hold the pieces in place as the icing hardened.  For last year's houses I asked my dad to mail me some meringue powder for making royal icing.  It is great!  Royal icing is usually not edible since it requires raw egg whites to make the icing dry hard and fast.  When you use meringue powder, though, you get the hard and fast effect, but can still eat it.  So, last year we used royal icing to make the houses, and just thick sugar cookie icing for decorating.  But that icing took too long to dry and would run easily.  So, this year we used royal icing for everything!  It was fantastic!  I also used a new gingerbread recipe that worked really well and didn't break my kids' teeth when they ate it!  (I used light corn syrup and added brown food coloring.)  I only ate a few bites, when it came out of the oven, but I think it tasted better than anything I had made in the past.

And, although I was busy the whole time helping Peter and Alex squeeze icing, we were done with all three houses in 2.5 hours -- in time for Brad to take me out for a birthday lunch at our new Starbucks!  Here are the final results!

Aren't they great!?!  Although these houses have gotten easier and easier every year, I will say, I’m honestly looking forward to be in the States next Christmas where we can buy a kit with everything already baked, cut and made!