We have finally done it! Our gingerbread house is finished. Rome wasn’t build in a day and neither was our gingerbread house. We actually split the work over four days this year: one each for preparing the dough, cutting and baking the walls, assembling the house and decorating it (the fun part).

We have made gingerbread houses for several years now and I thought I would share those lessons I have learned:

• Don’t even try to make your gingerbread house look like one in the magazines. That will only lead to frustration. Forget trimmings and fancy columns - I count the gingerbread house an architectural success if it stands up and doesn’t look completely lopsided. (Of course this rule doesn’t apply to you if you are an accomplished baker/cake decorator- but in that case you probably won’t be reading these instructions anyway)
• Take your time. This is a big project. The kids won’t have fun if it is turned into a marathon project. Depending on the age of your kids (and your patience level) some steps might be done best without them. I usually get fairly stressed at the assembling stage. Add to that the very hot sugar glue and it isn’t the best activity for little ones. However, everyone can help with the decorating!
• In my experience you have to make a decision: either the gingerbread house walls will be tasty to eat or the house will be sturdy. We have decided to go for the sturdy version (and basically discard the walls after the holidays). To get sturdy walls, just bake them until they are really, really hard.
• Don’t fool around with regular icing for glue to assemble the house. We instead boil sugar with a bit of water until it has a temperature of about 285°. Work quickly (otherwise the sugar will cool off too much and start to crystalize)! This works almost as well as cement (I am still trying to get some spilled drops off the kitchen table).
• However, the most important aspect of building a gingerbread house together as a family is to relax and have fun. Easy as it sounds, for people like me with a competitive/perfectionistic bent is quite difficult. However, practise really makes perfect here. This year I finally stopped worrying about the kids sneezing on the icing, the walls looking a bit bent or the candy sliding out of alignment. As a result, this year’s gingerbread house project was so much more fun than in previous years! The key here really is to enjoy the process and not to focus on the outcome!

Now I better run and take a picture of the finished gingerbread house before the kids eat off all the candy!