Last week we went to visit a friend who had, in the past (2012), helped us make gingerbread houses. We don’t see her often and when I mentioned our plans to visit, Eve immediately asked if we would be making a gingerbread house. I told her no, just visiting, but the idea stuck and she insisted. Sooo…. behold the Halloween Haunted Gingerbread House!
Our Haunted Halloween House
The process took a few days. On the first day we made the dough.
Eve in the kitchen. I love it!
She doesn’t even need a chair, just a little stool. :)
Then we rolled it out, cut it, and baked it.
She was eager to help cut out the pieces and ended up doing most of them all by herself.
Here are all the pieces.
On Saturday we built the house! Sadly my royal icing was not strong enough and did not “set” quick enough, so, alas, we had an unstable house on our hands.
Off to a messy start already! I think I need to use a smaller icing tip next time.
While we waited for the walls to dry we decorated the trick-or-treaters and house accessories.
The roof is on. We decided to add an M&M border to the wet icing, on the assumption that it would dry quickly!
After a wall and roof panel fell twice I decided it was time to bring out the reinforcements!
The second collapse also gave us a chance to put the gingerbread people and ghost inside, which we had forgotten the first two times we put the roof on!
I stuck the house in the fridge for awhile and we all went out to play. You have to take a break from the sugar fumes sometimes and it was a beautiful day!
These look good enough to eat!
When Aunt Rosy arrived we decorated the gingerbread house and added the accessories.
Ta-da! I took away the glass in hopes that the roof would stay. We propped it up with some gingerbread trees. :)
In this picture you can see the gingerbread dog house, the dog (white with red spots), and the trick-or-treater dressed as a pencil. I love that costume idea! I told Eve she should be a pencil next year and she decided Lex could be an eraser to go with her. :)
A rickety old house needs a rickety old fence in the backyard.
Happy bakers! (Eve has her bunny ears under her chin and it looks like some weird neck scarf.)
The house was lovely, kind of, and I stuck it back in the fridge for a little more firming up. It stayed there all day Sunday while we were busy with the CHaD (another post on that will follow soon). This afternoon I cleared off the table (not a small feat!) and set up a nice Halloween display. The kids were super excited when they came home from school.
I tidied up the table and set up a nice Halloween display this afternoon before the kids got home. They were excited to see it all setup. (Notice the glass behind the house? It started sagging after all the decorations were one, so we figured the glass was a required structural support. Lex added some candy to the top to make it look better.)
Sadly, we got back from karate to discover this:
Oh no! It lasted for a few hours before it caved in. Not even a nice roof slide like the first few times, this was just a complete cave-in.
Eve did a dramatic cry for awhile and then moved on. We agreed it was now a super spooky fallen down Halloween house. There were two casualties of the roof collapse, but the kids were consoled when I promised they could have the casualties for snack tomorrow. I claimed the third causality, a ghosts, for myself!
The house might not be perfect, but we had tons of fun so I’m going to call it a success!! (and try my friend’s royal icing recipe next time!)