Craftster Craft Challenge #82 – Gingerbread House Contest

Jan 7, 2013


This house on the right was my first attempt at my first Craftster Craft Challenge of the year. The house pictured above is my shining masterpiece that I submitted last night! I made two pretty epic missteps with the first house. My pieces were not completely cooled off when I started and I used homemade marshmallow fondant for the decoration, which was a little heavier than I anticipated. Duh. I think I also wasn’t as careful as I should have been when I was cutting out the pieces for the house and they didn’t fit together as well as they should have. So this time around, I carefully measured every piece and made sure it cooled off for a few hours before I started working on it! I used slightly thicker icing glue this time around and I also went with thinned royal icing instead of fondant. I also opted to decorate each piece before I assembled it all, and I think that helped. I went with pastel colors, inspired by our white Christmas tree this year that has a real vintagey feel.


Royal Icing 3 egg whites 1 tablespoon cream of tartar 2 lbs icing sugar 1/4 cup cold water (more or less) Beat the egg whites on high for 3-5 minutes, then reduce speed and add the cream of tartar, reduce to low and slowly add the icing sugar. The mixture will be really thick. From here, the less water you add here the strong the icing will be as glue – but the less smooth it will be as ‘paint’. So when making a gingerbread house, set aside some icing while it’s really thick and thin the rest of it out with water before adding colors!

Gingerbread This is the gingerbread recipe I used, I don’t remember where I came across it but I have been using it forever! 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 1/4 cup molasses 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1 tablespoon ginger 1 teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 cups flour 2 tablespoon water First, cream the butter and the sugar and add molasses. Then whisk together the cinnamon, ginger, cloves, baking soda and flour. Mix that with the butter mixture and when it gets really chunky add the water slowly. Put the dough in a baggie and chill for about an hour. Then roll out it with plenty of flour and cut out your shapes!