I hope these photos of our amateur gingerbread houses make you smile. My skills as gingerbread house decorator have improved slightly over last year. My daughter is really good at it. Her house has a bright orange, red, and yellow color scheme. My goal was to fully cover the house in the brightest, least expensive candies I could find. These include: M & M's, Mike and Ikes, Red Hots, Necco Wafers, Gum drops, Dots, Pretzels, Licorice Whips, Candy Coated Coffee Beans (which tasted terrible!) and Swirly Hard Candies. My girl also used Wafer Cookies and Candy Canes. She made hearts with the canes.
I tried gingerbread house recipes before without much success. But my good friend and neighbor is a real professional. She made the houses and the frosting this year and had a wonderful house making party! Before I found out she had a knack for this our gingerbread house projects always ended in emergency repairs with hairdryers and glue guns coming out! Well, it's all in the consistency of the frosting and the cookie has to be hard like a biscotti. I won't be able to give advice on this but if you can, please comment for my lovely readers. As you can see the results are colorful and happy! I can say - you should keep them up and away from the dogs! My puppy already ate my pretzel log pile! Have fun.
