Simple Mini Gingerbread Houses

A few friends and I have been doing a little preschool co-op this semester with our three year olds, and I wanted to create a special project for our final lesson and Christmas party today.  I have long loved gingerbread houses, so I created these mini houses for the kids to decorate.  Since they use graham cracker instead of homemade gingerbread and because of their small size, these houses are very quick and easy.

Since these are perfect for those who have never tried gingerbread constructions before, I thought I'd put together a little tutorial.

For the bases, I covered the lids of kids' shoe boxes with foil and lined them with a piece of parchment paper.  These little trays turned out to be perfect light but sturdy bases for the houses.

The base of each house is made with four squares of graham cracker stuck together with royal icing.  That is one thing that you can't compromise on; royal icing must be used, because it includes egg whites (or powdered eggs), which make the icing dry like cement.  Ordinary icing will not dry hard enough to secure the gingerbread house.

To make each house, pipe two perpendicular lines of icing on the parchment.  Stick square of graham cracker into one line and then pipe a line of icing down the side on the corner.  Then stick a second square on the second line of icing, pressing it into the icing on the corner.  Depending on the consistency of your icing, you may have to hold the two side for a couple of minutes until they stand on your own, but more likely they should immediately stand up together.

Continue the same way to make the rest of the base, then let it dry for maybe 30 minutes before drying to add the roof.  The roof is of course two more squares of graham crackers, with two shaved down rectangular halves of the squares as triangular supports to fill in the gaps on each side. 

 

 

I let the houses dry overnight, and they were very sturdy for the kids to decorate.  They had a blast, both decorating and eating the candy!

For these six houses I used almost an entire box of graham crackers and almost a full recipe of royal icing.  I bought some special candies from the bulk section at Wegmans for decoration, but I also found a number of little food items around my kitchen that could also be used, such as pretzels and cereal.

Here's GiGi's house.  Nothing like a gingerbread house decorated by a candy-loving kid!

See more great DIY projects here.