Gingerbread House Ideas – A Gingerbread Bakery

I love making gingerbread houses! So many great ideas for decorating plus who wouldn’t love eating all that leftover candy, right?! Do you make a gingerbread house for the holidays? Do you eat them after the holidays are over? I often find myself picking candies off throughout the month for a snack – don’t tell my family! {wink} Here are some fun gingerbread house ideas that your family will love plus our creation for this year – A Gingerbread Bakery!

Gingerbread House Bakery:

For our gingerbread house, we went with a fun bakery theme because who doesn’t love cupcakes, cookies and donuts! We started with a gingerbread house kit (no, I don’t attempt to make my gingerbread house from scratch) then made shingles out of gummy lifesavers dipped in chocolate and coated in sprinkles. Make extras because they’re delicious! For our siding, we coated the walls in icing and loaded them with sprinkles. On the front of the bakery shop, we added an “OPEN” sign with cake decorating letters. Oh, and let’s not forget the “lights” of candy coated chocolates.

For the walkway, we used mini chocolate chip cookies, green gumdrop “bushes” and finished it off with mini cupcakes.

Our fence was made of mini powdered donuts cut in half and the “snow” in the yard was shredded coconut.

For trees in the yard, we made mini cupcakes into Christmas trees by piling green icing high with little blobs of red and yellow icing for lights. We added on stars (cut out of yellow paper) on toothpicks to top each tree.

What would a bakery be without a wedding cake, right? We layered two mini cupcakes to make a wedding cake topped with a gingerbread bride & groom cut out of brown construction paper.

To finish it off, we have our cute mini donut snowman with a fruit roll-up scarf, gummy candy nose and a chocolate hat made out of a rounded Rice Krispie square and the bottom of an ice cream cone, covered in chocolate icing.

Gingerbread House Ideas – Decorating:

To make a gingerbread house from scratch, you’ll need to start with a gingerbread recipe. Here’s a delicious recipe for both the gingerbread and the icing (courtesy of the Food Network).

You’ll also need an easy to follow gingerbread house template like this one from AllRecipes.com.

Here are some other fun gingerbread house ideas for decorating:

• green spearmint leaves, mini cupcakes or green gumdrops for mini trees and bushes
• large marshmallows or mini powdered donuts to make snowmen
• pretzels for a fence or yogurt covered pretzels or mini powered donuts for a snow covered fence
• gingerbread men
• Frosted Mini Wheats or Shreddies shingles
• pretzel sticks or licorice to frame windows or doors
• sour apple circle gummies as a wreath on the front door
• upside down ice cream cones with green icing as trees
• mini M&M’s as Christmas lights on house and trees
• graham crackers to construct a dog house
• string licorice to line a walkway to the front door
• chocolate pebbles for a driveway
• Shreddies or mini chocolate chip cookies for a sidewalk
• place a glow stick inside the house to shine through the windows (if you cut windows out on your house)
• mini candy canes lining the walkway

What gingerbread house ideas has your family used?

Love Christmas games? We have so many FREE printable Christmas games here on Moms & Munchkins – visit our Christmas Fun page for a full listing. Here’s a sneak peek – Christmas Charades!

Love gingerbread but want to skip all those structural headaches? Try this Gingerbread House Bark instead! All the deliciousness of a gingerbread house but without the frustrations of trying to get that house to stay standing.

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