Gingerbread Castle

On the first real snow, we make a gingerbread house. 

This lovely custom has a very practical purpose: it almost never snows before Christmas, and thus the perennial craziness of making a gingerbread house is separated from the perennial craziness of Christmas prep.

This year, for some reason, we decided to do a castle!



Our castle is a triangular keep with a triangular curtain wall.  This is in keeping with the architectural reality that such a structure will have six walls and the historical reality that I have six children.

As someone who has made (or assisted with) a lot of gingerbread houses, here's the secret: decorate the walls before you construct the house!

That way you can decorate on a flat surface, allow the decorations to dry in their correct positions, and then glue it all together with royal icing (supported in their upright positions by canned goods).


If there is another trick I know, it would be: let it dry overnight before you add a roof or try to move your structure.  I no longer try to fudge that one.

This one wasn't going further than the kids, so I didn't bother with roofs and so forth.  Actually, I found that none of the kids thought to put a door on their wall, which is one way to make your castle impregnable, I guess!