On Wednesday, I showed you the supplies you will need to gather to create your own gingerbread house. On Friday, I showed you how to bake the gingerbread, make the trees & bushes, start a snowman and add Life Saver 'windows' to the baked gingerbread pieces.
Today is the last day of the series. We are going to put it all together! Let's start where we left off, with the snowman. After the fondant 'snowballs' dry overnight, it is time to put them together with some icing. In addition, I colored some icing black and made 'coal' eyes and buttons. (I used the round tip to make them.) Then, I colored some additional fondant green and made a scarf for the snowman. I also colored some fondant orange and made a 'carrot' nose. Both the scarf and nose were attached with icing. Here is what mine looked like.
Next, I decorated the house pieces. My goal was to make them look like the house was made of bricks. I also added icing to look like window panes. I used the round decorator tip to accomplish this. Lastly, trim up the windows to give it a finished look. All house trim work is done with the star tip.
It is not necessary to do this if you don't want to. You can decorate it many other ways as well. Try M&M's, cookies, gum drops, whatever you like! You could also leave it plain!
Once all the house pieces are finished, it is time to put them together. I started by cutting a hole in the center of my cake board. My gingerbread house was for a party and I wanted to add a light inside to have the windows 'glow'. Add icing to the bottom and sides of each piece. Press into place, gently. It may be necessary to use a bowl to hold the first pieces up while the icing dries.
As you add a new piece, trim it with icing for a finished look.
Time to add the roof. To ensure the roof stays secure, be generous with the icing. Then, gently press the roof piece into place.
At this point, you can now decorate the roof. You can cover it with frosting and add candies or other goodies like on the cover of the book Festive Gingerbreads.
I decided to make mine have a more 'realistic' look about it and used gum to make 'roof tiles'. Start by cutting sticks of gum into pieces. Each piece is then attached with a bit of icing. I used Fruit Stripe gum.
You want to have each row of gum overlap the row below it for a more realistic look.
To complete the entire roof, I used 6 large packs of gum. Trim it up for a finished look.
I also added a chimney.
I decided to cover the chimney with frosting and added some chocolate covered 'stones'. I got these at Fuzziwigs Candy Factory. I had extra pieces leftover, so I used them as a front walkway.
To create a 'snowy' finish, I covered the cake board with icing and added some icing to the roof so it looked like snow. I just used a spatula to add this effect. I also added some stick cookies to the back of the house and stacked them so they looked like firewood. I covered them with some icing so it had a snow effect as well. Here is a picture of the back of the house.
Here is the final result!
Right before I packed it into a box to take to the party, I put some powdered sugar into a flour sifter and sifted a bit over the entire creation. This gave it a look of freshly fallen snow.
It was a big hit at the party! I bet your creation will be a big hit for you too!
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