Tis the season for lights, trees, and gingerbread houses! If you have ever made a gingerbread house, you have likely dealt with the dreaded roof slide/house drop. You know, when your royal icing fails to do its job and your roof slides right off. Or when you are too impatient to wait for the walls to adhere together and you proceed with decorating but then, KABLAM, your walls collapse. Whatever happens, the end result is you covered in royal icing and candies shaking your hands in the air exclaiming “why me?!” Okay, maybe not, but it is still annoying. To help maintain your happy holiday demeanor, we are bringing you some super easy and effective gingerbread house lifehacks! Give these tips, tricks, and life hacks a try when you construct your gingerbread house this year.
Holiday Hacks: Gingerbread House Lifehacks!
Make your life easier (or just the part of your life you spend creating gingerbread houses) by using a hot glue gun to assemble your gingerbread house! It is a quick trick and it works like a charm. We recommend using royal icing to decorate your house (especially if you want to pluck and eat candy from your house throughout the month…or the day).
Buy a kit. This might seem like a no-brainer. But, some people bake and create their own gingerbread houses from scratch. Kudos to those of you who do that. But, a kit is a good alternative to those of us who are a little less handy in the kitchen.
Build a super simple “gingerbread” house out of graham crackers! You can use the same candy decorations and royal icing as your cement, but you don’t have to purchase a kit or bake your own gingerbread. Easy and cheap!
Bubble gum tape and Necco wafers make excellent roof tiles, and Chiclets work well as windows.
Decorate an ice cream cone as a “tree” using icing and various candy decorations.
If you make your own gingerbread dough, you can roll your dough out a few days in advance and then wrap it in plastic wrap until you are ready to cut it.
You can use melted chocolate to hold your gingerbread house together in place of royal icing. Just make sure you don’t burn it when you melt it.
Another option is to use melted gummy bears or caramels in lieu of royal icing. When it melts, it becomes strong like cement.
Decorate the roof last and the seams of your house first.
Love how your gingerbread house turned out? Preserve it with several layers of clear acrylic spray! After Christmas is over, pack it away in a cardboard box and save it for next year. Just be sure to let people know not to eat the candy off of it (yuck).
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