john lewis have egg and nut free gingerbread houses

[keresley]

I've been after one of these for ages and found one in John Lewis today. Its the one where you have to make assemble the gingerbread pieces and decorate it yourself. I think it cost around £12.

bb, just what i was going to ask as well.

It's pretty easy to make the gingerbread yourself, if you have time. I reckon you could safely replace the butter in this recipe with margarine. The only thing I'm not sure about is decoration - most recipes suggest royal icing, which contains egg white for the "glue" - I've been very successful with white chocolate in the past, but am not sure if you can get a dairy-free version. You could use dark chocolate for the "glue" then sweets and stacks of icing sugar to get a very pretty effect.

this one is very easy and nut/egg free. has dairy but think it would work with marg instead.

put together with thick icing sugar/water paste, poss add some glucose syrup.

construction wise, do the walls first and leave to dry overnight before adding roof.

Ikea's is usually egg and dairy free and only about £5

No, no, much easier than you think, and lots of fun. Use tins to support the walls as they dry, break boiled sweets into window gaps and pop sheets into oven for a few mins for stained glass windows. Seriously - it's no harder than the kit ones, and then you know what's in it.

Get a template (just google gingerbread house template) off the web - print out, lay over rolled out dough and cut round with a knife. Lots of templates are not to scale, though, so check this before you print and enlarge as required.