Gingerbread House Recipe

This Gingerbread House Recipe is the perfect fun recipe to make this holiday season. With my easy to follow step by step gingerbread house instructions, this will become your new favorite tradition.

Double it or triple it to make multiple houses, print out the gingerbread house template printable, and grab the recipe for the gingerbread house icing to glue it all together. It makes for such a fun family project!

This is a recipe that I dug out of a super old kids activity cookbook from the library a million years ago. The recipe for the gingerbread dough is delicious, and flavorful. It holds up perfect for cute gingerbread houses great for decorating. I actually used this gingerbread dough recipe a few years ago to make these great gingerbread cookies and it works perfect for that too.

How to Make a Gingerbread House

This is a brief overview of how to make this amazing gingerbread house recipe. For the full recipe with all of the measurements, be sure to see the recipe card at the bottom of the post.

1. Make the gingerbread house dough. Read all my tips and tricks for the dough below.
2. Chill the dough. Let it chill for a half hour in the refrigerator.
3. Get your template ready. Print out the gingerbread house template and cut it out. Take note that some of the pieces need to be used twice, for example, you need to cut two of the same piece for the front and back of the house.
4. Cut out the pieces of dough and bake them. Roll out the chilled dough and use the gingerbread house pattern to cut out all of your pieces. Carefully transfer the cut dough to baking sheets and bake them for 15 minutes.
5. Leave the pieces out overnight. Once the pieces are baked, we want to let them air dry for 8 hours to get a little stale. This will make them easier to work with.
6. Build a platform to construct the house on. Collapse a cardboard box. Put pieces of duct tape around the box to make it more stable. Cover it in aluminum foil.
7. Decorate the house! Now for the fun part! Make some gingerbread house icing and use it to glue your house together. Then use additional icing and candy to decorate the house.

Constructing Gingerbread Houses

The key to a successful gingerbread house construction is good gingerbread house icing. My main frustration with store-bought kits is that their icing stinks! So whether you are making this gingerbread house recipe from scratch or using a store-bought one, I highly recommend this icing recipe.

You can see in the photo above that a little icing on the bottom and the side are holding those two pieces up. That being said, I highly recommend that you go slow when constructing. Add pieces one at a time with some drying time in between.

Gingerbread House Recipe Tips

There are several things that makes this whole process easier that I have learned over time. If you are a perfectionist like me, these will help a lot. If you are decorating with kids, some of these tips will help with the frustration. But I spend a lot of time reminding my kids that their creations are perfect no matter what.

• Grab parchment paper and a wet paper towel for dough rolling. When you roll out your pieces of dough, put a wet paper towel on the counter, then a piece of parchment paper, the dough and another piece of parchment paper. Rolling out the dough between the two pieces of parchment makes for easy rolling. The wet towel beneath keeps it all from sliding around.
• Beware of your template sticking to the dough. You can either sprinkle some powdered sugar on the dough to keep that from happening or make the templates out of parchment paper.
• Use excess dough to make small gingerbread men.
• Make sure your cooked gingerbread house recipe dries out in the open at least overnight.
• Double my gingerbread house icing recipe. This will ensure that you have enough to do all the decorating you want to with a little left over.
• Decorate your pieces before you put it all together. This will keep you from fighting gravity as you add icing and candy decorations.
• Use a piping set to decorate. I love this one because it comes with lots of tips and something couplers which allows you to switch out tips. This is perfect if you are keeping all white icing, but even if you want a few colors, this set comes with three bags, so you could have three colors ready to go and switch out the tips you pipe it on with.
• Go slowly while constructing. Start by putting two pieces up (as seen above), then add the next wall, and then add the front. Once all of that is dry and stable, put on the roof.

Gingerbread House Decorating Ideas

My number one tip for decorating is have fun. Honestly, its so much more important that this is an activity that everyone enjoys than perfect looking houses. But here is a list of supplies I used get you started:

• Miniature candy canes and peppermint stirring sticks: These make for cute additions.
• Skittles: These are easy to find and add a lot of cute color to the houses. You can see them on my roof.
• Candy Dots: These are so fun to make a path at the front of the house.
• Ice Cream Cones: I coated these with gingerbread house icing that I colored green and then added white sugar pearls.
• Graham Crackers: These were used both to make the door of the house and then I crushed some and used that as a dirt path (with icing to hold it down).