GingerBread House
Our Fairy Tale Perfect Housing

My girl has been asking me to make a gingerbread house, and our first one ever came out looking pretty good!

The girls had tons of fun making it....

And it was as easy as buying this 23 kronor box from Anna's, the maker of the best Swedish pepparkakor/ gingerbread cookies!

I was all for doing the gingerbread house but imagined it taking a day or more. When I saw this short cut of buying a prefab yummy house, and envisioned skipping the struggle of finding the perfect dough, and then perfect construction plan, I was happy to lay my money down. The house became an instantly do able project, all fun no hassle. I found my kit at Co Op Forum, but I hear these boxes are sold at IKEA USA. It has the building parts only- 4 walls, 2 roof slabs, and 4 pieces for a chimney.

We made our own icing and decorated it using naturally colored candy from our stash. Gel hearts, and the last of the Sunspire M and Ms from the USA trip.

The Royal Icing for cement was easy, just beat one egg white with 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, and 1/8 tsp of cream of tartar powder. Two of the house pieces were broken, and the cement icing glued it back together nicely.

We made sure we had an extra box of Anna's pepparkakor on hand for my tasty-tasters, who were ready to eat some gingerbread, even though they had to keep their hands off the building materials!

The mom had to assemble the house while the girls watched and munched cookies, but they got to put the candies on.

We thought we did alright for amateurs.

Around town, we have spied these gingerbread creations in the bakery window.

I hate marzipan, and red food coloring, but the marzipan tomtes are pretty cute.

And the cinnamon sticks used for logs are nice touches, too.