Gingerbread House from a kit

This year both Kevin and Connor were more than excited to make a gingerbread house.  It isn’t often that Kevin wants to do these sorts of projects with Connor and all of the Christmas prep can get a bit out of control so I talked them into trying a prepackaged kit this year.

I love gingerbread houses. My grandmother used to order them for me when I was little and there was a huge one in the dining room where I went to college.  I tried to make one with my little brothers when I was in college.  I recall it being an engineering disaster so I wasn’t quite ready to tackle the full on gingerbread house with a 4 year old and a 18 month old…. especially with the 18 month old!

I had seen quite a few gingerbread house kits at Walmart so I thought I would pick one up when Amelia and I did some shopping, but we were at Target.  Not so many choices there.  It is fine and all – just not as many styles to choose from!

The kit came with a cardboard base that the house can sit on and the pieces were tightly shrink wrapped to it when they were packaged.  I was very grateful it was packed so well – no broken pieces!  The gingerbread house kit came with three kinds of candy, a packet of premixed royal icing, a small square of green fondant and all the walls, roof and even a snowman for the “yard”.

We were quickly reminded that neither one of went to engineering school!  But we managed to get the house together and standing on its own.  The royal icing is key in this process.  It needs to act like glue and dry quickly, but not too quickly!  The kit we used provided a HUGE big bag with a resealable top.  We took a few days to decorate so it was helpful that we could put the top on. We still have at least half the bag left over and we weren’t skimpy at all.

I pulled out some leftover Halloween candy since it looked like there wasn’t a ton of candy included.  We quickly went through all the candy that was in the kit and the Halloween candy.  Kevin went out and got another package of gumdrops and some holiday skittles the next day so we could keep on going. So………. too much frosting, but not enough candy…….

Connor LOVED decorating the house.  It was a little tricky to keep him focused since the frosting hardens quickly, we needed to do small sections at at time. He got the hang of it eventually.  I basically just fed Amelia gumdrops and tried to keep her from ripping the roof off! We skipped the fondant altogether.  It was a little too advanced for Connor and he was happy to just use frosting and candy.  I think it looks just adorable in all of  its craziness!  It is truly just a kid’s imagination and inspiration!

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