10 Tips for how to make gingerbread houses without stress

If you follow my tips for how to make gingerbread houses, I promise you will get through a gingerbread build and actually have fun.

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Making gingerbread houses can be a fun family project that everyone looks forward to. They can just as easily turn into a stressful messy disaster that will have you dumping the whole thing in the trash in favor of a less disastrous holiday activity. I know this because I’ve been on both sides of this scenario.

With years of experience building my own houses and building them with my students, I have some solid tips to avoid the whole stress side and give you houses that won’t break and will be actually enjoyable to put together. No need to hold your breath here.

Tips for how to make gingerbread houses

Why gingerbread houses are worth your time

1. Building memories: My kids tell stories as they create scenes out of gingerbread. The boys in my class this year all had partially melting snowmen that would make Calvin and Hobbes proud, Santa stuck in a chimney, and all manner of other things going on. Your kids will talk about these houses for years to come.
2. Your house will smell awesome: Baking gingerbread will put so many good smells in the air. Get within 5 feet of your house, and it’s an instant air freshener.
3. Creativity: I know people buy the gingerbread kits, but they often have broken parts and limited candy with zero personality. Pick up a little bit of fun candy, or make your own Necco wafers, and you can create whatever you want to. In a world with far too much tech for our kids, making a gingerbread house is a good old-fashioned tradition that builds your mind.

Why gingerbread houses become stressful

1. You build too fast: If you use something thinner than sturdy royal icing, you can’t build faster than it takes for the house to dry. Put up walls too quickly and they’ll come down.
2. You work messy: Any candy you use needs to be unwrapped and cut if necessary away from your work zone. Otherwise crumbs of candy bits and icing will be on everything more than they need to be. My students are bad about this, so I commit to being the royal icing maker/wrapper picker upper/Tim Gunn who walks around giving advice to the designers.
3. You used the wrong gingerbread recipe: If you bake gingerbread from scratch for a house, it’s best to take OUT the leavening. The baking soda creates small holes in the gingerbread that make it structurally weak. It also makes the gingerbread puff up making for complications in cutting your pieces. Use my gingerbread house recipe instead.

The best tips for how to make gingerbread houses

1. Don’t bake on the day you want to decorate: the baking will take a while even though a batch is not difficult to make. Gingerbread keeps well, so there’s no need to spend an entire day doing both baking and decorating. Pop the pieces in a tin and save your sanity!
2. Use a gingerbread cookie cutter: I used to make templates for houses, but they’re fussy to work with, and the scale of the house you make with templates is typically huge. Right now I’m using Ann Clark’s Mini gingerbread house cookie cutter, which is a house front and a side/roof cutter. I love this set because it makes a reasonable sized house that’s the perfect size for anyone. If you have multiple kids, you can easily get a couple houses out of my gingerbread house recipe without having to double the batch.
3. Assemble your house on a base: A good house needs a foundation, and so do gingerbread houses. Either build on a large flat platter, a sheet tray, or a piece of foam core. I always choose the foam core since it is lightweight, sturdy, and you can decorate the foam core itself.
4. Decorate flat if possible: It is much easier to decorate the sides and the front and back of the house if the pieces are flat. This way things can dry without having to contend with gravity. If you must build the house, follow my building steps in my gingerbread house recipe for the best results.
5. Glue in stages and use supports: Only glue 2 pieces of the house together at a time. Use a square container (Harney and Sons tea tins are absolutely perfect) to keep the edges square and give them support while they dry. Give the icing at least 15 minutes before you add another piece. By working slowly, you’ll give the royal icing time to set and harden enough that it can handle the extra weight.
6. Cut your candy: Candy is heavy even though it doesn’t seem like it. Cut things like gummy rings in half thickness-wise with scissors to make wreaths that won’t slide off your house. Starlight mints and other hard candies can be cut in half through the wrapper to make flat edges perfect for roof lines or sidewalk pavers. Snickers make easy brick work if you cut them to expose the inside. Start looking at your candy with the eyes of a builder.
7. Use a brush: Channel your inner paleontologist by brushing away frosting and candy crumbs as you go. It will make for a neater presentation.
8. Decorate your base!: Making a gingerbread house is lovely on its own, but putting it in a scene is even more fun. Make walkways, bushes, marshmallow trees or snowmen, anything you can think of straight on your base.
9. Don’t be afraid to mix in other cookies: You can make just about any fun cutout cookie with my eggnog cookies. You can see in the video one year two of my students made a beach scene with a full reindeer sleigh of ginger honey cookies one of them had made. This year I made a walkway with the centers of a batch of Linzer cookies.
10. Have fun: Decorating gingerbread houses should be fun. Turn on some fun music, make a pot of mulled cider, and have a good time. Vacuums and brooms are for later. Just relax and enjoy the process.

Feeling ready to tackle building your own gingerbread house? Try these recipes:

• Sturdy royal icing for gingerbread houses
• Gingerbread house recipe