Gingerbread house virgin

[frozendaisy]

Any tips? Please

I thought as we have many hours to fill indoors this festive season without our usual escape routes for some reason I have bought all the ingredients to make a gingerbread house from scratch.

Would really like to do the boiled sweet windows or is that too advanced for an utter beginner?

Make sure you have time! It may sound rather obvious, but the key thing to consider is to not rush it, otherwise you’ll become more and more frustrated when your walls won’t stick and you run out of time to decorate. Set aside a weekend and bear in mind that it’s probably best to do it in stages. It really helps to bake the gingerbread one night, glue together the next day, and then leave a few hours the next day to decorate.
Make sure you have a “hard” recipe, with more sugar in it than what you would use for making gingerbread men.
I would recommend trimming your pieces back to original template size after they come out of the oven.
Pipe your decorations onto the pieces before assembling. For less chance of collapse, glue the roof on the day after you’ve assembled the walls, when your house will be sturdier.
Some of those elaborate gingerbread palaces have cardboard or styrofoam supports inside! You could use empty cereal or tissue boxes to make it more sturdy.
Get a proper piping bag. Don’t use the short-cut and try the zip-top bag method (where you just snip a corner, fill the bag with icing, and squeeze)—you need to be more precise.

Instead of boiled sweet windows you could make little square gingerbread pieces to decorate like windows and stick them on.
Royal icing is a must! Sets rock hard and holds it together.
You could always use some props inside the house to add extra support for the walls.

I would recommend trimming your pieces back to original template size after they come out of the oven

Yes! Good tip. That’s the other thing I meant to say. The gingerbread always spreads out a bit and doesn’t keep its shape in the oven.

Cook the ginger bread slightly longer than you think, you want it more crisp than soft and use a very stiff Royal icing made with egg whites (or instant royal icing works well)

I can't comment on the design side, I just leave the kids it once the thing is built and they cover it with randomly placed sweets. The first year I did try to "supervise" so we could have a stylish house, that was very stressful!