The good old gingerbread houses are an extremely beautiful Christmas decoration and assembling and designing the houses is not only great fun for children, but also delights adults. In the USA, entire parties are even organized where pre-made gingerbread houses are decorated by all participants. However, since the current pandemic does not allow us to have such gatherings, we will remain with the family version for the time being. A few ideas what youMake from homemade gingerbreadWe have already given you what you can do and build. Today we would like to give you a few ideas on how to decorate a gingerbread house.
Decorating a gingerbread house – creative ideas
When you decorate gingerbread houses anduse as Christmas decorations(or eat it straight away), you have two options - either you bake the individual elements yourself and cut or cut them out with special cookie cutters, or you make it easier for yourself and buy a ready-made gingerbread house set (for example, you can decorate a gingerbread house from Ikea ). Either way, you will then need a suitable and, above all, edible glue for the gingerbread house as well as a few ideas for decorating the gingerbread house. And when decorating a gingerbread house, you can really use a variety of sweets!
When to bake and design a gingerbread house?
Interestingly, there is a Gingerbread House Day in the United States, celebrated on December 12th. You could use this to make your own gingerbread house while celebrating this interesting holiday. But of course any other day is also suitable if youBake gingerbreadand then want to decorate a gingerbread house. If it is only intended for decorative purposes, you can then leave it as long as you like. If you want to eat it at a certain point in time, follow the best-before date.
Decorate gingerbread house with icing
Icing is the classic gluefor gingerbread houses. In order for it to last well, it should be sufficiently thick. Then you can fill it into a piping bag and use it not only for gluing, but also for gingerbread house decoration. You can paint squiggly lines, but also windows, doors and roof tiles. Even if you use the icing for gluing, a piping bag proves to be a great help in being able to work precisely and with even the smallest decorative elements. You can also incorporate glitter into the icing or color it and then decorate the gingerbread house with it.
You can then use the piping bag to design the gingerbread house directly or prepare any shapes on baking paper, which you can stick to the desired places as soon as they are dry and firm - again using your edible glue, of course. Feel free to use it toodifferent nozzlesto get different designs and a varied gingerbread house decoration. This way you can decorate your gingerbread house individually and create a unique design.
Above you can see a simple technique for creating equal-sized elements for decorating. Draw circles of the same size on the baking paper (e.g. using a coin) and fill the inside with any patterns you like. While the icing is still wet, you can also add other decorations such as beads.
Decorate the gingerbread house with sweets
In principle, you can decorate the entire house with icing without needing any additional decorations. But of course you can also integrate other elements to create colorful, unusual and particularly tasty gingerbread houses. And here you are really spoiled for choice, because, as you know, the choice of sweets is huge these days and literally everything is suitable for decorating houses.
For the roof
Smarties und M&M’sare very popular for designing the roof and imitating tiles. But they are also used for window and door frames. In principle, you can also use other round sweets such as candies, fruit gum, chocolate chips, small cookies and the like. You can also make round roof tiles like the one in the picture above yourself by buying fondant or making it yourself, rolling it out and cutting out small circles. Or how about slicing marshmallows and using them for this purpose? The square cinnamon cornflakes and the chocolate pieces from a chocolate bar are also suitable if you want to decorate the roof of the gingerbread house.
Windows and doors
On the one hand, you can of course use good old icing if you want to decorate the gingerbread house with windows and doors. Just record them. Alternatively or in addition to this, however, are suitablealso candy canes, licorice and sugar snakes for the frames, for example. You can also design doors and window sashes or shutters with waffles and cookies. To create an open door, you can simply cut it out and then stick it open on the wall of the house.
Decorating the facade of the gingerbread house – ideas
The facade doesn't necessarily have to be decorated, but it can. In addition to icing, a colorful design made from sprinkles also looks very interesting and cheerful. Who valuesChristmas colorsYou can also just mix red and white sprinkles, coat the facade with icing glue and then spread the sprinkles on top. You can use nuts to imitate a stone facade. Or how about a facade made of coconut flakes?
A slightly more complex but very beautiful variant is a wooden house. Of course, you don't have to use wood for this, because after all, you want to decorate your gingerbread house but also be able to snack afterwards. Instead, simply imitate wooden beams by using pretzel sticks. Glue them to the walls of the house with icing.
Creative gingerbread house – the surroundings
If you feel like it, you can create a beautiful landscape around the house. A front garden with small bushes made of green, cone-shaped fruit gums, Christmas trees made of plastic or homemade from icing or cookies. You can also use the icing to paint fences on baking paper and then stand them upright around the house. But they are also suitablePretzels and pretzel sticksfor this purpose.
Make your own Christmas trees for the gingerbread house
Christmas trees are easier to make than you might think. Make a fondant cone as a base. Now you can either use a star nozzle and start at the top to create the fir branches. In this case you can also use oneIce cream cone as a baseuse. Or you can leave it with the fondant cone, which you now just cut into with sharp nail scissors as shown in the instructions. Then you can use it to decorate the gingerbread house.
Gingerbread house ideas – Finally a little snow
After baking and decorating the gingerbread house, you can finish by sprinkling icing sugar here and there. It gives your house the finishing touches and makes it really Christmassy and wintery. Sprinkle it through a fine sieve over the roof, over the fir trees and the rest of the garden if you have made one, and onto other vacant areas.
Take a look at the beautiful examples of how and with what you can decorate a gingerbread house in the gallery below!
Design a gingerbread house for Christmas in red and white
Decorate your own gingerbread house – create melting snow with a piping bag
Idea for the roof on prefabricated gingerbread panels
Cut out circles from fondant for roof shingles
Dark gingerbread house with colorful accents
Buy a gingerbread house or bake it yourself and then decorate it with sweets
Elegant gingerbread decoration in gold and silver
Cookies in the shape of a Christmas tree to design
Make gingerbread houses like wooden huts with pretzel sticks
Pretzels and pretzel sticks for decorating gingerbread houses
Gingerbread house decoration ideas with colorful fruit gum
Bake a gingerbread house and decorate it colorfully with candies
Design a green facade with fondant and chocolate roof tiles
Make your own gingerbread house in the shape of a church
Decorate a rustic gingerbread house
White chocolate covered pretzels for a fence
