- Don’t believe the instructions that say that gingerbread houses are easy to assemble. Any sensible parent knows otherwise.
- Don’t bother using the toothpaste glue that tries to pass itself off as icing, but is more like quick-hardening cement.
- Hot glue the gingerbread house pieces together. I came up with this brilliant scheme this morning, and it worked beautifully. Of course, my children shouted in dismay, “But then we can’t eat it!” “We don’t eat it anyway,” I reasoned. “Yes, we do. We ate it last year.” “You did?” “Yes.” “Okay, well, I’ll make cookies, and you can eat cookies till you puke. How about that?” My children just shrugged their shoulders. They know better than to argue with their mother.
- If you use icing from a can (that you normally would put on a cake), the icing spreads a lot more easily. The only drawback is that it doesn’t harden. But why does it have to harden anyway? Who makes these rules?
- Make sure there is plenty of candy, so that one of your sons isn’t hogging all the candy on his side of the roof, while your daughter starts crying that all the candy is gone, and only half of her rooftop is decorated.
- If you run out of candy, you can use chocolate chips in a pinch, but be forewarned that they look like giant black thumbtacks.
- If you use the real self-hardening cement icing, make sure to clean it up immediately. Otherwise it turns as hard as stone and is impossible to clean up. You’ll have to scrape it off with a paint scraper.
I hope you enjoyed my gingerbread house tips!
Tags: Christmas, gingerbread house, humor, winter
Bahahaha, been there, man they are hard to put together rofl. I never thought about hot glue LOL
Thanks for the tip
Hot glue made it so easy!
I loathe constructing gingerbread houses, which is why I’ve relegated that privilege to Grammy. 🙂
I much prefer making them from graham crackers. The smaller scale makes them easier to stand up, they taste better, and they’re not lingering on our counter for days on end…
I’ve made graham cracker houses, too. I used cream cheese icing, and the whole thing tasted like cheese cake!
Very funny! I like the hot-glue idea: you’re right, who says you have to eat it?
I once decided to make a gingerbread house of sorts, only to find out (as you point out) that it’s WAY more complicated than people think. Then I though of sugar cubes, but knew that would take forever.
In the end I used graham crackers, like you did, except I cheated: I built a cardboard model and “pasted” the darn things on with icing.
Oh, sugar cubes are horrible, much worse than gingerbread houses. White glue doesn’t stick, and hot glue melts the sugar cubes!
This year I have graduated from graham cracker houses to big gingerbread men! Thank you, Costco. They don’t need to stand, and let’s face it–my kids mostly care about the candy anyway. 😉
You got big gingerbread men at Costco? That sounds fun! My son Stephen begged me to make gingerbread men. Maybe I’ll have to go to Costo…
This wonderful advice almost makes me want to give it another try.
But not quite! I’ve finally admitted to myself (and the family) that building gingerbread houses drives me crazy! Anything with frosting and food coloring drives me crazy! But maybe one day I’ll forget, and we’ll give it another try using these great tips.
It’s beautiful by the way!
I’m telling you, the hot glue is the best tip! I’ll never make another gingerbread house without hot glue.
LOL! We do graham cracker ones (mine is usually a nativity scene, but the kids do whatever) and I think it’s more about playing with candy than the finished product. 🙂 I suggested doing nativity cookies *instead of* these this year, and thought I was going to get lynched, so I guess I need to go buy tons of candy.
Kids do love candy…
Lol, great tip using super glue. That royal icing is such a pain!!!
Super glue is perfect.