Fecking bastarding gingerbread house

[BewareOfTheToddler]

I now know why the rates of alcoholism in Northern Europe are higher than one might expect in view of the prices: fecking bastarding gingerbread houses! The bloody roof fell off and the whole thing collapsed - have built it up again sans roof and plan to leave it overnight before attempting the roof again, but honestly.

Dining room table (kitchen too small for such creations) and floor are now covered in hundreds and thousands, and I appear to have eaten approximately 15% of the decorations. And still no bloody house.

Oh, and a piece of advice: do not make this in the presence of your toddler. Because you will be that parent who gets hauled in for the chat at nursery about Language in the New Year. Thank God my cat can't repeat what I say. You're welcome.

Stealth boast you nobber, that looks great.

The construction workers near me are all on crystal meth so a bottle glass of prosecco won't hurt.

Yup total stealth boast

A friend of mine updates her Facebook page every year with a picture of a collapsed and broken ginger bread house. It makes me laugh every time... and gets rid of any notions I might have of attempting one myself.

Aww that's gorgeous!!

Is it still standing?

Thank you - it wasn't intended to be a stealth boast, it's basically smoke, mirrors and dolly mixtures . I'm fine with the actual decorating (apart from the bastarding hundreds and thousands, of which there are indeed hundreds and thousands on my floor now). Just the construction...

Good news: the roof stayed on!
Though it looks dangerously concave on one side. Only one solution - we'll have to eat it asap.

I'm going to need some energy to wrap presents today - house was made at expense of anything more sensible and I failed to remember to charge the tablet last night so no chance of doing it around toddler this morning. WIBU to sit around staring at unwrapped presents while drinking coffee and muttering hexes to see if they wrap themselves?

That looks great!
My 10 year old made ours (with a strop in the middle as the walls were a little wonky).
it came from M&S and was actually not bad at all.
Can I just ask what the purpose of these is?
Do any of you actually eat them?

Best picture ever to illustrate the futility of gingerbread house construction (mine went in the bin along with the cookbook)

Oh feck. I'm making one today with my six year old.

I've mentally erased the horror of previous years and decided it's the perfect thing to do on Christmas Eve.

My Facebook memory yesterday involved saying a rude word in front of the children having burnt myself on hot sugar toffee.

I'm so pleased we don't do them anymore. DSs did their own last year, but decided not to bother in future.

DS3 and I were once very impressed by the chap on Bake-Off who built a gingerbread coliseum and said we'd do that one year.
So in the gap between finishing work and going out for the work Christmas party one night last week I decided that was the perfect time to get a stroppy 15 year old out of his lair and demand that we made a gingerbread coliseum. I thought we'd bake semi-circles over the outside of a cake tin and it would all fit together like a Roman dream. We fell out over arch cutting out and then the mix slid off the cake tins onto the bottom of the oven and then we both stropped off. And that's why I got horribly drunk at my work Christmas party.

Has anyone tried using chocolate to glue these things together? I've had a few years of icing failures, and was thinking chocolate might work better?

Scruffette, that is what ours looked like about 10 hours ago! The roof was also cracking on one side. Decided to just go for it with as many supports as possible as per MN advice and it did hold. But may not remain intact for long as DS has already attempted to raid it and is now eating gingerbread for breakfast .

BelfastSmile, I definitely would not use chocolate! You'd need a walk-in freezer and about three people to hold it in place until it set...

Hot toffee sugar does the job without trauma. Melt a little bit of water and lots of sugar in a large pan and bubble until it caramelises. Dip the ends of the walls in the toffee and stick the walls together. Same with the roof. It's foolproof as long as you are very careful not to burn yourself.

We used the Ikea kit this year, made up the Royal icing as per the instructions and left the walls for a couple of hours before adding the roof. It worked.

Make scaffolding with the bamboo skewers 😂

Make scaffolding with the bamboo skewers 😂

Yeah, I definitely should have left the walls for longer than it said!

Now trying to caffeinate and psych myself up to see why we have a lawn full of feathers and no cat in sight....

One of my boys favourite Christmas traditions is building the ginger bread house and then timing how long it takes to collapse. Parenting fails leads to parenting win !!!

It looks like you did a good job there. Worth the blood sweat and tears.

Maybe if we get enough gushing gloaty posts on fb/twitter about 'gingerbread paths' they might become the next christmas tradition and we won't have to bother making houses!

We superglue ours!

I always put one in the Xmas eve box for dds to make, it falling down and being binned or eaten is one of our happy Christmas traditions 😂

Costco sell premade houses for decorating. We are doing ours today.

The kids decorated the pieces. I spent half an hour trying and failing to stick it together.
We went straight on to the eating part - problem solved 😂

@TheMasterNotMargarita my 10 year old had a strop mid way through too 🤣

Our was a kits bought from a shop, but clearly made from gingerbread flavoured paper as dc snapped two walls and a chimney within 30 seconds.