Gingerbread House
Details
Building your holiday gingerbread house takes a smidge of imagination, a wee bit of construction, and gobs of Hershey candies, icing and decorations to create an edible work of art! Whether you make this a family holiday project or the centerpiece for your holiday cookie table, it’s sure to bring lots of smiles, oohs and ahhs!
You'll Need
-
Gingerbread cookie house kit
-
Large board or flat plate
-
Variety of Hershey candies
-
Scissors
-
White and green icing
-
Edible glue (optional)
-
Icing decoration piping kit (optional)
-
Gel icing or cookie icing to create fine details
-
Small red and green candy decorations
-
Toothpicks
-
Shredded coconut
-
Decorative candy star
Directions
1
Build the gingerbread house using the kit instructions. Assemble your gingerbread house scene on a large board or serving plate. Ensure you have room for all extras you want to include, like trees, sidewalks or porches.
2
Foundation: Create a foundation for the house using either KIT KAT® Milk Chocolate Candy Bars or TWIZZLERS Twists Strawberry Flavored Candy layered horizontally and cut to size. Carefully place your gingerbread house on the foundation. You can even extend the candy foundation to create a little front porch as pictured.
3
Doors and Windows: Make your house cozier by using a HERSHEY’S Miniature as a door or halved HERSHEY’S Miniatures and ROLO® Candies for windows. Stick candy pieces to the walls with icing. Hold until the icing is slightly dry to ensure it stays in place.
Tip
Try using edible glue (confectioner’s glue) if your icing is not holding.
4
Roof Decor: Spread or pipe white icing on the roof. Decorate your roof with HERSHEY’S Premier White Creme Chips and add a chimney using a diagonally cut PAYDAY Peanut and Caramel Candy Bar.
Go bold and festive with a holiday striped roof using TWIZZLERS PULL ‘N’ PEEL Red, Green and White King Size Candy. Starting just below the roof ridge, lay the peeled TWIZZLERS Candy diagonally across both sides of the roof, alternating the colors. Trim any extra along the front, back and edge with scissors. Line your roof ridge with red and green HERSHEY’S HERSHEY-ETS Candies or unwrapped JOLLY RANCHER Candies for an even more spectacular finish!
To make icicles, use a small round tip with the tip pointing up. Slowly squeeze the icing, letting it build up into a small ball, and then pull the tip down slowly, releasing the pressure as you reach the desired length of the icicle. It should look like an upside-down teardrop when finished.
5
Side Porch (optional): Make an adorable side porch out of a HERSHEY’S Milk Chocolate Bar and HERSHEY’S Chocolate Mint Flavor Candy Canes. Break candy canes into four equal pillars as tall as your roof edge. Using icing or edible glue, line up candy canes in a formation to support the corners of the chocolate bar. Level your candy bar on top of the candy canes, and then use icing or edible glue to adhere the top of the canes to the chocolate bar.
Once the porch is in place, add additional icing to connect the chocolate bar to the roof edge for extra stability.
6
Finishing Touches: Add icicles on windows, doors and rooflines using the icing included with your kit, or use a piping tip to create them using the icicle technique in step 4. Use gel icing or cookie decorating icing for more delicate details like dots, patterns, swirls, windowpanes or other designs. Attach small red and green decorator candies as doorknobs.
You could even add brick-like details with JOLLY RANCHER Hard Candies, TWIZZLERS Twists on the corners, or JOLLY RANCHER Gummies as fun details on the side of your house.
Tip
Use toothpicks to help remove icing or add details to your icing.
7
Sidewalk: For a colorful, fun sidewalk, line your path with HERSHEY’S HERSHEY-ETS Candies and pave your sidewalk with shaved HERSHEY’S Chocolate Bars. Or if you want a more subtle rock pathway look, use HERSHEY’S MINI KISSES Milk Chocolate Chips.
8
Let it Snow: Now that your scene assembly is almost complete, sprinkle coconut flakes over your board or plate.
9
Trees: For the peanut butter and chocolate trees, stack the following in this order: REESE’S Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Miniature, REESE’S Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Snack Size Cup, another Miniature and top with one HERSHEY’S KISSES Candy. Decorate the trees with green icing using a petal or leaf icing tip, small red decorator candies, and a decorative candy star at the top. For the chocolate peppermint trees, top HERSHEY’S Peppermint Bark Bells with HERSHEY’S KISSES SPECIAL DARK Mildly Sweet Chocolate Candy using icing.
More Ideas & Inspiration
These tips and ideas are meant to spark your creativity! Set your imagination free while you decorate your holiday gingerbread house. Create your fun, one-of-a-kind piece by mixing it up with your favorite Hershey candies, icing colors and scenery.
Want to go all chocolate? Get more candy confection inspiration from our HERSHEY’S Holiday House how-to.
Gingerbread House shelf life: We recommend consuming the gingerbread house the same day you create it for the best taste. However, if used for decoration only, you can keep the gingerbread house for three days or more.
