I was picking up my son from school last week and he was admiring all the gingerbread houses that the 4th and 5th graders were carrying home.
Son: "Wow! Mom, did they bake ALL those gingerbread houses at school today?"
Me: "No honey, I think those are made out of graham crackers."
Son: "Ooooooooh! Can we make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers too?"
Me: "Sure."
The boys' gingerbread house last yearNow, normally we would be making gingerbread houses out of the
egg-free gingerbread, but since we already made ornaments out of gingerbread (which have been disappearing from my tree) and the boys can eat graham crackers, it would be a nice change (and less work for me) to use them this year.
My 2 year old thinks the tree is his own cookie buffetAnd to make my life A LOT easier, I figured out a simple egg-free and dairy-free alternative to attaching the house together: melted marshmallows! It works for rice krispie treats so it should work for a graham cracker gingerbread house.
I used Golden Grahams cereal for the roof shinglesI melted a bag of marshmallows (about 40 large ones or 4 cups of the miniature) with 1 tablespoon of shortening in the microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute. After stirring it till smooth, I spread some of the melted marshmallow onto cardboard cake circles. We applied some melted marshmallow to the sides of the graham crackers and attached them together. It worked!
Nerds, Mike n Ikes and Skittles to decorate the front of the houseWe had a bunch of candy left over from Halloween (yeah, can you believe that?) so we used them up to decorate our houses. We also got some extra peppermint candies for the fence and
Enjoy Life Boom Choco Boom bars for the doors.
Corn Chex windows and Twizzlers, Laffy Taffy and Mike n Ikes for the fence.One note about cutting the triangle pieces for the roof: use a serrated knife and go only one direction. Going back and forth (in a sawing motion), will break the graham cracker. As you can see with the picture below, we had quite a few broken pieces. It's okay though, we'll make
S'mores Marshmallows out of them :-)
Yup, that's a big jar of candy alrightThe only problem with marshmallow icing is it sticks to EVERYTHING! And I had to stick the bowl of marshmallows back in the microwave a few times to melt it again because it firmed up in the bowl.
I just love seeing my kids enjoy this family tradition.
Check out the boys' gingerbread houses this year!
And here's my niece's pink gingerbread house.
This is the second house my oldest son made. It even has a slide on the side :-)
My brother really got into building his gingerbread house. He made this scale model of our old house. Wow!
As you can see, we all had fun making these gingerbread houses. We even had a competition this weekend to see who made the best one. We let my one-year old niece pick her favorite but she was more interested in eating the graham crackers than picking a winner so we decided we all won :-)
Happy Holidays!
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