What the hell are you supposed to do with gingerbread houses?

[thishedgehog]

I have one and I'm very much looking forward to making a mess of putting it together however I have the following questions:

• when do you assemble it? Is it a group activity?
• where do you display it?
• do you eat it?
• if you eat it, when do you eat it?

I am kind of thinking you have putting it together, then you leave it out for a while then demolish and consume?? But perhaps that's all wrong??

Making ours tomorrow, admiring over a day or so then breaking bits off every day. The kids break bit off and I pretend not to notice.
Not eating it at all - what a waste!

@endehors
The windows sound amazing !
I'd look on amazon for a witch.

Hmmmmmm just gonna throw this in

We got one once, I'm not sure about eating it though so it seems a bit of a waste (sorry to be boring).

There seem to be so many yummy decorative foodie things at Christmas, it seems a shame to have something that won't be eaten and enjoyed, unless you have a great homemade recipe of course

I love the kit from IKEA. I make up loads of glacé icing, buy coloured icing in tubes, smarties, jelly tots and the like, out tubs of cake decorations and leave the DC to it. They love it. I love it. We admire for a day or so and then scoff.

Our tradition is to build it on Christmas Eve. We put it on the table and admire it when we have family over for dinner that evening. Then we crack open the gingerbread house for pudding and serve it with ice cream, put the rest on a tin to eat over the next few days. I’ve always thought of it as just a fun activity, like baking a cake with the kids which you would eat the same day rather than something to display for days or weeks. It’s glorious in its transience 😂

The kits always taste horrible imo. Usually make our own. They never last more than a couple of days. Gingerbread scrummy. Decorations by the by (for me).

DD and I baked and built one last year. Never again! Trylng to get the damn thing to stay up was a nightmare.

Tasted fabulous though :)

@SoupDragon
Some need the skills of an engineer

I helped build my actual house. And last year I helped build a gingerbread house. It was much harder than the actual house! It was so structurally unsound. The roof was too heavy compared to the walls and my gingerbread changed shape a bit whilst I cooked it so it didn't all fit together. I'm pretty sure one gable end doubled in size. I don't get how the walls were supposed to stay upright against the laws of gravity. I got through so much icing and it looked like a 4 year old decorated it so I had to pretend my friends 4 year old had helped.

On the subject of gingerbread, does anyone remember the coliseum John Whaite made in the GBBO? That must have been a nightmare to put together!

There were tears, bad language and interior scaffolding made from kebab skewers.

Always make it for eating. Usually keep it overnight to look pretty and then smash it with a rolling pin. Once in an airtight tin it keeps for ages

We do this recipe every year, seems to work well. I think the trick is to stick the sweets on pre-assembly (so that you don't break the pieces) and to use proper royal icing (made with egg whites) to stick it all together. I think I preferred it when the DC were too little to have much input and I could make it look pretty

@grasspigeons
@SoupDragon
Both made me laugh. Grass I'm so impressed you helped build your house. At least with gingerbread you can kind of bend it a little
Soup
Last year I heard my dds yelling every time I left the room "muuuuuuuummmm it's falling apart again" bloody thing looked such a mess by time we finished

Google image but you get the picture

Sorry to go slightly off topic but does anyone have a recipe for gingerbread house dough? How is it different from the usual biscuit dough? I'm about to make my first one with ds and want to get it right. Or basically just not a huge disaster...

We glued it together with melted sugar last year (adult only activity) but apparently you can get gingerbread glue, or it's similar to royal icing.
Anything else and the roof slides off.
We got a kit from Home Bargains last year, not amazing but fine. We use it as a between-Christmas-and-New-year activity.

Windows easy to do, noyanbu. We do the same thing for stained glass biscuits. Cut out your window, place on baking tray, put some broken pieces, different colours, of boiled sweets (we use Fox's fruits) in the window space then in the oven until melted, take out and leave to set (if all goes according to plan!)

"I helped build my actual house. And last year I helped build a gingerbread house. It was much harder than the actual house!"
Brilliant :o I love this

I used to make a gingerbread Moomin House but DD doesn't like the Moomins any more so will have to go for the more traditional kind this year

This one was stuck together with icing rather than sugar glue and then we put a candle inside the house which melted the icing so it fell apart soon after the picture was taken

Sorry to go slightly off topic but does anyone have a recipe for gingerbread house dough? How is it different from the usual biscuit dough?

I just use normal gingerbread dough but apparently substituting margarine instead of butter makes it a bit stronger, and I roll it out thicker than I would for biscuits so it's less likely to snap when putting together.

at the Moomin house. That must have been tricky to put together!

This was from a few years ago, we had a thaw so the icing melted

It was tricky, especially as the cutter shapes only worked if rolled out quite thin so it broke easily (made extras of each piece for the inevitable breakage) and the windows always break. Much better to do solid walls and just do icing windows!