Something Crafty- Gingerbread Houses!

This year, I suggested to the husband the he and I try our hand at making gingerbread houses (or in his case, a gingerbread Jeep.  More on that later).

We'd never made them before, but decided to give it a go anyway.  I took a complete leap of faith by using a recipe for the gingerbread and icing that I found on the internet.  Since sometimes internet recipes can go very, very wrong, I was a little bit nervous.

This one required a whopping NINE CUPS of flour, and when I reached about the halfway point in mixing up the dough, I was sure my poor Kitchenaid mixer was about to die a slow and painful death.

Luckily though, my mixer survived, and after three days of refrigeration, and 45 minutes of dough rolling, the gingerbread was ready to go in the oven. 

While the dough was baking, I got all my supplies ready, including the most important, hot chocolate- a required companion to each and every Christmas craft in the Daughters household.

After an hour of cooking, my five cookie sheets worth of gingerbread was ready to go.

Since we didn't use any sort of pattern or kit, we just decided to wing it.  We started with paper templates to prevent us from totally screw up, and then started cutting.

While my husband decided to cop out and use glue to put his Jeep together, I stayed legit, and used only royal icing for mine.  Lots of it.  Like a couple pounds worth.

It was worth it though, because for my first effort, I think I cam out with a fairly awesome house.  I bought a ton of different candy to use on it, but ended up becoming rather obsessed with the red hots.  Something about just having the red against the white of the icing made it seem extra Christmas-y.

So there you have it.  My fledgling attempt at gingerbread art.  If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, you can find the recipes I used here.

Word to the wise: This dough is not for mixers that are faint of heart.  If you have a small or less powerful mixer, I would highly recommend dividing up the dough and mixing it in sections.  Also, the directions are very vague about cooking times and temps.  I did mine at 300 degrees for about an hour, and they turned out just fine. Last but not least:  try to cut the gingerbread within a half an hour of it coming out of the oven.  After that it becomes much harder to cut, and tends to want to crack.

Oh and...

Remember when I said that the hubs was making a gingerbread Jeep? 

Yeah.

I wasn't kidding.

Crazy, right?

-alison