How To Make A Dream Gingerbread Home
Dorie Greenspan, Michele Norris and Norris' children crafted this gingerbread cottage. Melissa Gray/NPR hide caption
Dorie Greenspan, Michele Norris and Norris' children crafted this gingerbread cottage.
Melissa Gray/NPRGet the recipes for Gingerbread House Dough and Royal Icing.
Make A House
Spread Out The Fun
Gingerbread needs to chill after it's mixed, and it might need a chill after rolling and cutting. You should also set your built house aside before you decorate.
Plan A Dream House
Design a pattern, or find one online. You can cut one out of foamcore, paper, oaktag or cardboard. Then cut a platform out of wood, Styrofoam or foamcore to build your house on. Leave space for landscaping.
Build It Strong
Royal icing is both the mortar and the glue. Glue one side of the house down to the platform, then attach a side, holding the pieces together to stabilize them until the glue dries.
Decorate To Dazzle
Consider gum drops, candy canes, day-glo Twizzlers, starlight mints for doors and shutters, marshmallows for snow people, lifesavers for wreaths, cookies and gelatin strips for windows, mini frosted shredded wheat squares for a thatched roof, sparkle sugar, sprinkles and gingerbread snaps.
Savor Or Save It
You can eat your gingerbread house, but you can also save it for weeks. Or, you can pack it loosely in a large plastic bag and store it in a cool dry place — for next year.
With just a few tools and some careful measuring, you can create your own gingerbread home this season — or even a split-level, a bungalow or a gingerbread McMansion.
Whatever the style, cookbook author and gingerbread expert Dorie Greenspan says it's best to take a few days to make a gingerbread house. That includes making the dough, letting it chill, cutting out the pieces, letting them dry, constructing the house and then finally decorating, she says.
Because Greenspan is an expert, she and NPR's Michele Norris tried building the house in one day at Norris' home in Washington, D.C.
They grabbed a pizza cutter and some templates to cut out the house, but they were making a cottage: That means no bay windows, no porticos, no detached mother-in-law suites. After sliding a baking sheet under the wax paper with the rolled dough, Greenspan carefully made her marks, like a seamstress with a dress pattern. She made sure to leave space between her pieces so the dough could expand while baking.
She trimmed away the excess and slid the pre-fabricated gingerbread walls, roof and chimney into the oven. They cooked the three full baking sheets for 25 minutes each.
As the pieces cooled, they mixed up the royal icing glue. Greenspan used a large piece of foam core for the base, and they situated the gingerbread cottage so it had a nice front yard. Using a small spatula, Greenspan applied the royal icing like spackle and joined two corners together before reinforcing it from the outside. She and Norris assembled the rest of the house, then let it dry.
But this was a rush job so that they could finish before Norris' kids — 8-year-old Norris and 9-year-old Aja — got home from school.
Greenspan and Michele Norris laid out an obscene amount of candy: Skittles, Dots, marshmallows, day-glo Twizzlers, candy canes and sprinkles. And they divided the royal icing glue into two bowls: one for Aja and one for Norris.
The kids arrived, and they started decorating. Michele Norris caught little Norris eating the construction materials.
"I'm sorry, but jelly beans taste so good," Norris said.
After about 90 minutes, their humble cottage was fabulous. Across a shredded wheat-thatched roof, Aja arranged a series of brightly colored candies.
Twizzlers became electrical lines; there was a door framed by a pair of candy canes. Heart-shaped cookies became windows. They even had a garage door on the side of the house and a marshmallow security light hanging from the gingerbread roof.
"I love this house," Greenspan said. "I could move in."