Every year in our household we have a little tradition of making a gingerbread house.  As the years have gone by we have started to get more serious about it (competitive), this year the architect decided it was time we built our own, from scratch.  Ever the optimist I bought a back up kit… however, it was banished to the back of the cupboard.

It’s been a tough week, but we got there in the end.

Here is our step-by-step guide.

1. Decide on a concept. Think of the vision of your house – this can take time (and a few arguments).  This year we’ve gone for an Australian theme.

2. Make the gingerbread dough. (I’m not going to go into detail on ingredients etc… there are hundreds of recipes out there and I don’t want to play favourites! However, this year we followed the Baker Boys recipe…it’s got a lot of treacle in it, and the gingerbread comes out a little harder.)

3. Roll the gingerbread flat (about 3-5mm thick).

4. Create a base.  Our house has decking, all the way around.

5. Cut out the rest of the pieces. We used a plan (as drawn up by architect – but this isn’t a necessary qualification).

6.  Bake all of your gingerbread, and allow time for them to set. We left our pieces overnight.

7.  We then started with the construction of the walls, using royal icing (you will need a lot of this!)…

8.  … then the roof. (This was tough!)

9. Next come the balustrades – you can’t have anyone falling off the deck!

10. And the tin roof.

11. And finally… drumroll please… we had to put it on stilts.

Our Gingerbread Queenslander!

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