Best gingerbread house/tips

[mummyof2boys30]

Hi. My Ds (13) is looking a gingerbread house to make this year. He has autism and gets upset if things go wrong so any recommendations of best kits or any extras to buy. We have never did one before. Thanks in advance

I just do the Lidl ones. I usually have to hold the whole thing together for 5/10mins with my hands then it is OK to decorate. They come with sweets but you can get more stuff to put on.

This woman makes the most amazing gingerbread houses, here is the recipe and consistency needed to make the icing "glue"

And here is how she puts it together. See her other videos on how to decorate.

We often decorate the slabs then put the house together with the rest of the icing

Use something heavy to stabilise the house while it sets. I usually do the four walls held steady with tins of soup. Let the icing set and then put the roof on. Make the icing that you using for gluing thick - it will hold better, and any that spills out the sides will be covered by decorations.

We made one once a few years ago. I remember something about rolling out and cutting the shapes, then chilling in the freezer before baking - this helps to maintain the shapes. Ours stayed intact for a few weeks; I think we made the icing a bit thicker too as PPs have said. We didn't use a kit but a recipe.

We built one at our first Christmas in a house that needed renovating and it was cold and damp. The gingerbread absorbed the damp and collapsed within 48 hours.
So my recommendations are:
keep it simple and use a kit. Gingerbread biscuit dough is awkward to roll out uniformly. The shape you cut out is not necessarily what comes out of the oven. The Ikea kit is good if you’re near one.
Keep it in a dry room once done.
We put an artificial votive candle in ours and it (briefly) looked gorgeous.

At least with your own gingerbread you can make it nice and thick, I found kit ones are a bit thin and brittle. Keep it simple and not too big. Gluing it together is the hardest part, and I'm an engineer I should know better. Liquorice sticks are good for extra support.

Use boiled sugar to hold the walls together rather than icing, much stronger.

We follow a Rachel Allen recipe where you make paper templates and cut out the parts along the templates, then trim while warm.

The bit that makes the biggest difference is making royal icing yourself from scratch, using icing sugar and raw egg white, rather than buying the royal icing that's ready-mixed where you just add water. It holds so much better.

Easiest way to do it if making from scratch is to make big trays of gingerbread, then cut to the templates when it’s cooled down a bit.
Then if you want you can cutout windows and melt boiled sweets in them for stained glass. The off cuts can be cut into trees or something, or set aside to scoff later…

Lots of icing and cocktail sticks are handy to pin it together for extra support, makes it easier if it’s thicker.

The m&s kit last year included a moulded tray to hold up the walls while the icing set. Much less chance of mishap!

Thanks everyone, i will probably buy one of the kits, im rubbish so dont fancy baking my own. Have lidl, ikea and m&s closeby so will prob go for one of them

If DC is likely to get upset and frustrated absolutely get a kit from the supermarket. One of the supermarket ones last year came with a tray that you set the bits in and it held it together - M&S or Morrison's or Lidl? Can't remember. We did a few as MIL bought DD one, we had already bought DD one and my SIL bought some to do as a family one weekend before Xmas at hers. The ones my SIL got had the tray as her DC also have autism and one DC has autism and PDA and gets extremely frustrated when things go wrong but really wanted to do a gingerbread house. She has saved the trays just in case they don't come with them this year.

We always supplement decorations as some of them just come with sprinkles. We get the tubes of writing icing, chocolate buttons, selection of gummy sweets from the sweet isle. Definitely use the white icing that comes with it as glue.

Dr Oetker's edible baking glue is fantastic. We use it every year and it works without fail.

Buy additional sweets for decoration if using a kit. There is never enough. White chocolate buttons make great a "snow covered roof". Icing pens for stained glass/delicate work.

We decorate first, let dry and then build, refixing any parts that fall off in the process.