Tips for the ikea ginger bread house?

[macandcheesewithbaconbits]

Royal icing recipe anyone?

Bought one, haven't tried it and not sure I'm goings to get round to it in the end.
BUT Mary Berry made on on the bake off Christmas special just this week so I should be on I.player.
www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mary_berrys_gingerbread_91126
Recipe here.

Thanks smartie. I was thinking of doing it with Dd 4 with jelly tots o decorate.

I just used icing sugar and water 'glue' and some cans to hold it together whilst it set. I couldn't get the chimney to stay on again though..

Ours seems to have gone a bit soft so the roof bends inwards. So it's a bit more like a gingerbread shack.

I just used glacé icing as allergic to egg, worked ok. Used melted sugar to glue it together which worked really well.

1 egg white
Enough icing sugar to make stiff paste (approx 300g - depends on the size of the egg)

Beat egg white until it's quite stiff, slowly add icing sugar until you have a stiff paste (don't try this with normal granulated sugar btw - it will not work )

I build the house in the evening, using cocktail sticks to reinforce connections (Lidl ginger bread - I think it's softer). You could try sticking the parts in the oven on 50 degrees C for a few minutes as well.

Decorate the next day. Voilá! Done. Fend off children who want to eat it there and then

I recently discovered that Tate and lyle do 'royal icing' sugar which you just have to mix with water , so much quicker than making proper royal icing and sets hard like proper royal icing unlike glacé which I can find is a bit soft.

I've made two gingerbread houses

Yes, Littleoak, that instant royal icing is excellent, nice slightly lemony flavour too. What a pity this forum doesn't accept photos, we could all have displayed our constructions, be they mansions or shacks, with pride.

Am doing this with the dc this weekend thanks for the tips.

Ooh thanks for this thread, will be doing mine shortly not with the kids cos I'm too anal

Mad momma I bought an extra one for me! I think that makes me just as bad!

winkle it does accept pics.

I used royal iceing for my xmas cake.

Does it, ZeVite?, I thought it was only chat that had the easy mechanism for pics. How do you do it on here?

I bought a tube of ready made icing, and we decorated the roof with white choc buttons, which looks very good. Also bought some mini gingerbread men to stand around it (M&S but I've seen them in other reatialers too)

It fits nicely on a rectangular cake plate.