Gingerbread houses are great gifts. They are a lot of work, and the fun part is definitely the decorating. But before you can get there you have to make the dough and bake the house components.

Start by mixing the dough and then kneading it on a floured board.

Gingerbread Houses

Now cut out he sides and roof of the house. These are small cutters we have, but you can always design your own or freehand it. I've done both - and either way works.

Now make your royal icing. This will be the edible "cement" that binds and holds the houses, as well as the decor. This batch is ONLY for assembling houses.

Use a heavy can to hold up the first side as you "glue" it down, then add the two remaining sides, making sure that there is enough icing to make the house completely sturdy.

Use plenty of icing. Most of the flaws will be covered up in the decor part.

Peel away the excess and transfer the cutouts to a silpat lined cookie sheet.

At this point you can cut out doors and windows, or add embellishments.

Some recipes tell you to cut right onto the cookie sheet but I prefer to do it this way.

Once it's workable, roll out the dough, usually 1/4 of an inch is the best for baking evenly and building a sturdy house.

Here's where you can get funktified. The open doors and windows are just calling out for fun. Here we added the baked door that was cut out, and inside is a little gingerbread man cookie.

Here we did the same thing with a window.

You can also put fruit leather on the inside - making a colorful stained glass window.

This house shows an added heart embellishment, as well as a porotico.
What did I tell you, funky as you wanna be.

Here are all nine houses we did. Now these things have to dry overnight, to make sure they are nice and secure before we add all that candy decor.

And speaking of candy - here are some
DECORATING IDEAS...