Home made Gingerbread House 2013

I am starting a new Christmas tradition for my young family this year...a home made Gingerbread house which will be wrapped up and on display and will be opened (with great ceremony) and devoured on Christmas Eve while watching cheesy Xmas movies...

Now this is my very first attempt at baking and decoration a gingerbread house (I do love a challenge) and I am pretty happy with the result. But I have to share that it was not a smooth ride.
The baking went very well and the decorating started equally well but then I tried to add the roof and well it all turned pear shaped when I tried to adjust the roof at a late stage and the whole thing collasped and the roof parts broke. I very nearly through it across the room but I thought 'no I can fix this'. So I manged to get the sides together and after much pondering and coffee drinking I had a brilliant idea...

I found a tall skinny box, chopped the ends out, covered it in greaseproof paper and squeezed it into a diamond shape and placed it inside the house. I wasn't about to start baking more roof pieces so off to the supermarket to buy pink wafers and chocolate fingers and royal icing mixture my daughter and I went...

I applied liberal amounts of icing to the greasproof insert and between the wafers and fingers and it all stuck together beautifully. Then I just started sticking and eating heaps of candy. I think I gained about a kilo today from all that sugar.

More is more when it comes to decorating...

The base is just a thick piece of cardboard covered in grease proof paper....

 

 

The iced Christmas tree I bought readymade from the supermarket...

And here it is all wrapped in its cellophane waiting for Christmas Eve to come around...

Now the only problem is I have no high shelt to put it on and two kids under 4 and a husband with a sweet tooth...hmmmmmmm I am going to have to be on guard duty I think!