Making A Gingerbread House - A New Family Tradition!

Last year my sister and I both wanted to start a new tradition in our homes, we wanted to make Gingerbread Houses with our children and have a bit of a competition about it. You know the sort of thing "My Gingerbread House is better than your Gingerbread House because..." normal sisterly competition nothing OTT about it at all. We decided to go with the Gingerbread Houses that you can buy from Ikea, they are normally on offer of buy two for x amount of £'s at this time of year and with Ikea being a few moments away from our homes it would be a time saver to buy the pre-made sides rather than making them ourselves. The Gingerbread House on the box looks fantastic, I mean how hard could it be to top this?

Ikea Gingerbread House Packet

Turns out really hard.

The pieces are impossible to stick together with boiled sugar so do yourself a favour and if you are going to make one buy a tube of three of writing icing like the ones Silverspoon make and I use a lot as this will allow you a sturdier "glue" use Mugs and bowls to hold the pieces in place and leave for an hour to allow the pieces to set.

Gingerbread house in pieces

If you do plan on putting detailed decoration around the outside of the house then be prepared for a lot of cursing and don't attempt it with your children if you are wanting something that looks perfect. Anyway eventually we made this...

Our Excellent Gingerbread house that we are very proud of even though it looks a bit naff!

And it's not that bad is it? Is it?