Gingerbread House Party

I decided to host my very first Gingerbread House making party for the children in my homeschool group. I was nervous at first about what I was undertaking because I had never made a gingerbread house from scratch, and I had a lot of kids coming over to my house. I thought I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Well... I found an awesome website called ulitmategingerbread.com and found all the recipes for the gingerbread dough and frosting. Then I set out making my prototype. I wanted to test the recipes and work out any kinks. I had some problems at first and I was really starting to worry if I could pull it off. It looks so simple, but the actual construction is a bit tricky... my roof kept sliding off and it was looking like a disaster. But after I figured out the problem (the dough needed to bake more till almost burnt) my roof stayed put. After my house was set up I started to decorate it... now this was the fun part! I really enjoyed decorating this, and my kids even helped me out. I think I am now going to make a yearly tradition of making one at Christmas time. Here is my protoype

Now that I was satisfied with the results of my first project... it was on to mass produce pre-fab gingerbread houses. My house really smelled good.
I stayed up till 2 in the morning, twice, mixing, rolling and baking the
pieces for the houses.
If it wasn't for the great tips from Ultimategingerbread.com I would've given up. The aluminum foil was the trick. Wet your countertops with a sponge then the aluminum foil will stick to it so you can roll out your dough without it sliding... then just lift the sheet and put right onto the baking sheet to go in the oven. This keeps the pieces from getting distorted while transferring.





Here is the result of a few nearly sleepless nights work! Only took 4 batches of dough to make twenty childsized houses. Whew!
The results were so worth it though. The kids (and adults) had such an enjoyable time decorating their houses and eating candy. And some even decorated themselves! Haha! Here are a few pictures from our party day...


The day turned out to be a big success! I was so thrilled to see everyone getting so involved and being so creative in this process. I was really amazing to see how the kids translated things like pretzels into little windows, and wafer cookies as doors or roof shingles... I think everyone really enjoyed themselves... and I was so amazed at how quiet the house was with so many children in it... Here is a picture of Gingerbread Lane...