Valentine Gingerbread House

Before Christmas I made a gingerbread house. It was relatively easy to be honest & the kids loved it...on New Years day they ripped it apart and ate it and I hope that it will be our new Christmas/New Year tradition. Whilst chatting to Susan Mann on Twitter at the beginning of January she mentioned that she would like to give a gingerbread house a go, so we (half joking) said that we should do one for every event during the year...starting with Valentines Day, and then by Christmas we would have the houses down to a fine art.


I mistakenly thought that as the last one was straightforward this one would be too....I was wrong! Firstly, even though I had a tonne of sweets to decorate the house, I had forgotten to get the boiled sweets for the windows so they would have to stay glass-less. In hindsight it is probably a good thing as they would've ended up smashed to pieces anyway. I used the same recipe for my gingerbread as last time but I was rushing a bit as I'd left it a bit late in the day & was racing against the clock before school pick up. The dough was a bit drier than last time which made it a bit more difficult to roll out neatly...I then rushed cutting it which resulted in uneven edges when it was baked. I then messed up cutting a heart in my door & cut another door too small....


When it came to sticking the walls & roof together I made up the royal icing and added some pink food colouring to it. That tiny bit of extra liquid seemed to make the icing a bit too runny meaning that the walls didn't stick as quickly as last time and needed to be held in place & propped up with cans of tomatoes & jars of peanut butter....and then one of the walls fell down, breaking into 3 pieces! A bit of patience, some extra icing and some more tin cans it was eventually all built and ready to be decorated.


I used a variety of sweets including Haribo heart throbs, Asda rainbow buttons, raspberry mushrooms and strawberry mallows, pink Smarties, mini candy canes, pink & red dragees, Asda cake sprinkles and Swizzels Matlow Love Hearts, all stuck on with more pink coloured Silver Spoon Royal Icing.


After the initial falling apart of the walls I really enjoyed decorating it, with some help from Hanna, who I suspect was more after stray sweets rather than wanting to help!


Roll on the next event which I think is going to be Jack's birthday next month.....am I brave enough to attempt a Peppa Pig house!