One of our advent calendar activities is to make graham cracker gingerbread houses. I have hosted a “cousins” party at my house for the last 4 years (including this year). I make the houses the night before (one for each kid) by gluing graham crackers into a house shape with hot glue. Yes…you heard me…Hot Glue!
This ensures that the houses are STURDY so little hands can frost and place candy on it without it crashing down. The kids know this and do not eat the graham crackers or glue when they are finished. But they can still pick off the candy and eat it. I place each house on a paper plate with their name on it. My older children help me make them by getting the crackers ready and putting the cousins names on the plates while I do the gluing. There are 19 cousins to make houses for now!
My sisters and sister-in-laws each bring a couple of different types of candy to decorate the houses with or the frosting (we use Royal Icing). We decide before hand who will bring what. When all arrive, we divide up the candy so that they each have their own little cup of candy to use on their house. We also fill small plastic baggies with their own frosting and cut the corner of the bag so they can spread the frosting easily. They each are given their own plastic knife so they aren’t licking and sharing :)!
It is so fun to see each of their individual personalities as they decorate their houses. Some pile globs of frosting and candy together and call it good. While others spend the entire time carefully decorating with precise candy placement and color patterns. It is a lot of fun, and a little messy, but so worth it. The cousins look forward to it every year and so do I! (The pictures are from last year’s party).
**edit—Royal Icing Recipe:
Makes about 2 1/2 cups
2 large egg whites, or more to thin icing
4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar, or more to thicken icing
1 lemon, juiced
Directions:
Beat the whites until stiff but not dry. Add sugar and lemon juice; beat for 1 minute more. If icing is too thick, add more egg whites; if it is too thin, add more sugar. The icing may be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
*You can substitute 5 tablespoons meringue powder and 1/3 cup water for raw eggs.
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Letti says
i am so doing this when i get back to california. do you have the royal frosting recipe?
yay! how fun! just today my daughter said she wanted to make one (shes 5) and so i got all the stuff to make one with her tomorrow! cant wait! :D
What a great idea. Now I have to find the longer crackers. The ones we have would only make small houses.
We have made these at our house. They do come crashing down EVERY time! I never thought of using hot glue and making them "non edible". Very smart!
Got Glue! So Smart! They are always so fun!
This post reminds me of my childhood. I have a December birthday so we would always make these at my birthday parties and all my friends would get to take one home. For my boys party this year I am going to do trains out of candy bars (for the cars) and have them decorate those. It is really fun even if its messy. Thanks
Love the idea of hot gluing them together! You are so smart!
My mom always glued the house together with melted sugar that way it would be strong but still edible. She just had to be very careful. I think she just heated the sugar in the cast iron.
oh how i wish we had graham crackers here in Australia…one of my choicest experiences with them was when my daughter lived in Ithaca NY and we visisted some friends of hers and had a bonfire to burn their christmas tree in July …fire flies and pine burning ..the senses realed….they made graham crackers marshmellows and chocolate wrapped them in foil and put them on the side of the fire for a bit ..then we ate them…oh it was a heavenly totally calorie loaded explosion to experience..dont know what they called them ..cant remember… oh but the taste experience i do… we make the ginger bread houses here too but make the ginger bread in the slabs or use a biscuit that has no ginger taste at all..but they look the same… kids delight and sugar overload… fun fun fun!!!!
When my kids were in elementary school and had class Holiday parties, I would make a graham cracker gingerbread house for each student in the class. The kids brought the candy to decorate and we'd divide it up into cupcake tins and put on the tables. The adults would add the icing and the kids would decorate. By the end of the day, the icing had dried and the kids took home their houses to enjoy over the winter break. It was a lot of work, but it was so worth seeing how much fun the kids had making them.
Our family makes a big gingerbread house every year as one of our Holiday Traditions. We used to design our house and make the gingerbread and cut it out…but now, we purchase a pre-made house after Halloween when they are 75% off on sale (one of the Haunted Houses they sell in the Halloween aisle). We put it together with the icing provided, but we don't just use the purple, black and orange candy in the box. We go through the Halloween candy the kids get trick or treating and pull out the starbursts, the m&ms, skittles, tootsie rolls, starlight mints, etc. and put it aside and use it for the gingerbread houses. It's a great way to keep the kids from eating all the Halloween candy at once.
Traditions are fun. Thanks for always sharing yours through your blog. I really love reading it every week.
We are doing this tonight- my kids are already questioning why I'm using hot glue! "You can't eat that, Mom!" :) What a great idea though- we always have a challenging beginning to the evening when we just let the kids put together the houses with frosting- it never sticks fast enough.
Just a tip- and it might be that I got a bad couple of boxes, but the Great Value brand of graham crackers are a little bent- not good for straight little houses. :) I usually buy the name brand, but I figured why waste the money on crackers that wouldn't be consumed, but I guess it would have paid to use the better brand.
I use the melted sugar method to glue the houses together. I just do it in the morning and we decorate after dinner. Just 1 cup of sugar in a pan. It's like cement.
Instead of Royal Icing (which is a pain to stick the pieces together with) or hot glue that makes the house inedible, I use melted sugar. Melt the sugar in an electric frying pan and dip he edges of the crackers in the liquid as you build. Put it together as you go and it sticks like super glue.
Im making one today having the whole family over yay !!!!
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