Ikea Gingerbread House

[sapphirestar]

I bought one of these a few weeks ago and thought dd and I would have a go at assembling it tomorrow.

Has anyone done of these? What do I need to buy from the shop in the morning? What would make the best 'glue' for want of a better word?

Have never done one before so any tips or advice greatly appreciated!

There are two main routes for sticking it together, either white icing, made up pretty thick, with icing sugar + egg white, or the other option is make a simple caramel by melting/cooking sugar in a heavy bottom pan (which you should plonk in a shallow bowl of iced water to stop the residual heat in the pan cooking the caramel further whilst you use it for the assembly).
Whichever 'glue' option you choose, holding each wall piece upright using pairs of canned goods is helpful, and glue the roof plaques onto each other then let the pitched roof set a bit by itself before attempting to top the house walls with it.
Similarly, let it all dry thoroughly before attempting to relocate it from work surface to final resting place.
Ooh and curly wurlys make nice fences and chocolate fingers make good borders for flower beds. Oh and build it on a cake board. Good luck

The IKEA gingerbread house was the one that ended up chucked in fury at the kitchen wall, because I could not get the component parts to stick together using their recommendation of caramel glue. Since moving on to Lidl version and using the forcooksake stiff icing method, no problem. I assemble it on an icing board, and use cocktail sticks stuck in the board to hold bits up until they dry. Making it in situ avoids risks involved in moving it. Smarties are always useful for decorating edges and roofs.

I used caramel on an ikea house last year. I dipped the edge of each piece into the caramel and it dried rock solid pretty much immediately. It is very very very hot though. Do not under-estimate how hot the sugar will get. I built my house whilst the children were sleeping and they decorated it the next day.

Newton, maybe I did not caramelise the sugar properly. Icing sugar less hazardous for clumsy people like me.

So glad I found this thread!

I bought the Ikea gingerbread house without giving glue any thought (apart from vaguely thinking it would be included in the pack).

If it goes wrong, which I strongly suspect it will, I'll probably be doing a John Cleese impression, stamping it to dust, just to "teach it a lesson".

My dsis attempted to put it together with icing sugar yesterday. It looks like a dogs dinner as several pieces broke (more than once) and she is not a dab hand with icing. I have flu so wasn't up to the job. The plate it's on is covered in mess and we daren't move it. Curly wurly fences might disguise that!

Buy a packet of royal icing, or make some from scratch. That should stick. Prop up with tins or mugs. Also glue it to the cake board, then it should be fairly stable. I tend to use icing sugar mixed with a little lemon juice to a fairly stiff consistency and then give it a day to dry.

Caramel is fine if you get everything ready first, and there is nobody around to distract you.

I was a bit stuck as to what to do with the left overs, so poured it into the plastic container from the gingerbread. And promptly melted the plastic. Did I say it gets hot?!

Mine was smashed to bits when I opened the box last year :-( Ikea is over an hr from me though so didn't bother to go back just sulked

Did it this weekend in the end. Looks pretty good and smells amazing, used the sugar glue Ikea suggested. Never underestimate how hot molten sugar gets!!! Can't post a pic here for some reason though!

Sorry it's too late for OP but might help someone else: I used melted white chocolate for my lakeland mould one. Worked well and tasted good with the gingerbread.

Oh wonderful Sapphire! Super looking forward to ours too.

Royal icing is the way to go. I did mine - it was a mess but charmingly so and it tasted and smelled lovely. Definitely worth doing!

My ikea one was rubbish. Almost every piece broke.

I got the John Lewis village instead and it was much better.

I tried the sugar glue last year and gave myself a lovely burn.

Royal icing for me this year!

I did wonder about using melted chocolate but wasn't sure if it would be strong enough to hold, good to know it works!

Btw, even 4 days later, my living room still smells of gingerbread...amazing!

We do it with caramel every year. I always buy 2 in case we mess up but never do. I leave the kids in charge - it's a Christmas Eve tradition in our house. Disclaimer: kid in charge of caramel is big.

We do one every year and I've never bothered with the hot caramel, I just smoosh as much thick royal icing as I can all over the joins and it usually holds. It ends up looking as though there are large snow drifts on the roof or so I like to kid myself and if you give the whole thing a generous dusting of icing sugar snow once it's all decorated it hides a multitude of sins.

Ohh, we have bought one of these for this year. Hoping no bits are broken!

Stick i'll stick with royal icing though as not sure I trust myself let alone the girls (3 and 5) with the caramel.

Mine was broken too