Gingerbread House Contest

Posted by Alexis Tirado

With Thanksgiving officially over, we're full force into celebrating the rest of the holidays. Has anyone began their Christmas shopping yet? Are you ready for eight days of Hanukkah? Luckily for us, Naomi Gabay and Mario Bosquez from "Living Today" are already in the holiday spirit. This past weekend they created cute gingerbread houses and want you to vote on your favorite house! Go vote below!

Naomi Gabay, supervising producer of "Living Today"

Using Martha Stewart's No-Bake Cookie Cottages, building your own gingerbread house is easy! I used graham crackers for the walls, and royal icing to assemble the house. The fun part was decorating it –- pretzel-covered log cabin walls, Life cereal shingles on the roof, and colored sugar "lights" decorating the edges. Outside the house is a snowman created by gum drops and Fruit Roll-Ups, sugar-covered ice-cream-cone trees, a gumdrop and Fruit Roll-Up wreath, and a poppy-seed walkway. The entire scene is set on a fluffy bed of coconut snow. It's 100 percent edible, and fun and easy to make!

Mario Bosquez, host of "Living Today"

I decided to go with a traditional holiday house complete with marshmallow snow and a candy flower "garden" bordering the cottage. When purchasing items, you should look for hard candy with a flower motif embossed on the surface. I recommend a heavy duty mixer to prepare the royal icing and make sure the icing creates peaks before loading it into the pastry bag. I used a serrated bread knife to "saw" the graham crackers that were used as roof supports.

Another suggestion: Place a towel on your work surface to catch all the cookie and candy crumbs. Once you have the foundation up and before the candies are applied, place the house in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to firm up the icing support. Happy holidays!

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Comments

[Cindy]

Both houses look stunning. Well done!

[Carol]

Oooo, nice.

If you're not so into cooking you can make a nifty paper one. Jan Brett (the children's author/illustrator) has a Gingerbread Baby house you can print from her site. It is big enough for a table centerpiece.

http://www.janbrett.com/gingerbread_baby_house.htm

I borrowed her design and made a tiny one, and made it into a pop up card.

http://extremecards.blogspot.com/2008/11/gingerbread-house-pop-up-card-tutorial.html

Carol
Extreme Cards and Papercrafting