What do you do when you go to the store to get a gingerbread kit and the shelves are empty? You make them yourself out of graham crackers!!! I made these with my kids and they loved them. The materials are easy to get from your grocery store (I don’t do fancy recipes), the construction is simple, and they actually taste delicious, unlike the store bought kits.
What you will need:
Graham Crackers (4 full crackers per house)
Store bought tub of frosting
Candy (red, green, white)
When I was researching this, many directions said to use royal icing but most of the recipes contained ingredients that I didn’t have. Others recommended melted sugar and I tried this but burned my finger so I decided this wasn’t a good option for my kids. I wanted something easier so I tried store bought frosting and believe it or not, I worked perfectly!!!
Step 1:
Divide 2 of the graham crackers in half. These will become the sides and roof. Using a serrated knife gently cut the top 1/4 off the tops of the remaining two crackers. The trick to doing this without cracking them is to apply very light pressure and gently saw the piece off. If you work softly and slowly, you should be able to cut it without cracking.
Next, cut the top of the cracker into a point.
Step 2:
I dipped the edges of the front of the house and the edges of the side in the frosting then pieced them together on a paper plate. I made sure to put frosting on the bottom edges to help the pieces stick to the plate. When I put the roof on I made sure to put the center line in the horizontal position
Step 3:
Now for the best part, the decorating. I browsed the candy aisle at Target and found some great white, red and green candy. I put all the candy into a muffin tin and gave my boys some store bought icing tubs (I didn’t want to pull out my icing tips and piping bags) and they worked great. I like putting the candy in the muffin tins and thought that this would be a great thing to use if you were having a gingerbread house decorating party.
The candy I bought was mini and regular M&Ms, Imperial Cinnamon candies, Tick Tacks, small marshmallows, Mentos, gummy bears, gum drops and mini candy canes
There was definitely a lot of candy eating while we decorated, and my 7-year old and 4-year old went pretty overboard on the decorating but I love how much fun we all had together.
If you are looking for an easy thing for your younger kids to decorate, check out how cute these sugar cone Christmas trees are. Just get yourself an ice cream cone and flip it upside down. Cover it in green icing and decorate it with candy.
Watch us make these gingerbread house on my Youtube video:
