Family Traditions: Building a Gingerbread House
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I shared with you about one of our fall family traditions of pumpkin carving but another one that we love is building and decorating gingerbread houses every year! We’ve always decorated pre-made kits at Christmastime but Sweet Creations sent us this spoooooky Haunted House Cookie Cutter Set. I was SO incredibly excited because Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I had never seen gingerbread house cookie cutters before! This set has a LOT of fun extras and can actually be used for non-spooky holidays as well which makes it very versatile.
It includes cookie cutters for the front/back of your house, the sides, and the roof. These are not your average cookie cutters – these are SO cool because after you’ve cut your dough you just flip the cutter over to press a design into your house!! So if you want to use it for other holidays you can still cut a plain house out without the designs.
Check it out!! I had SO much fun pressing these cutters into the dough (I used the gingerbread dough recipe on the box) because my house was looking awesome already!! I am not good at making baking projects look all fancy so these tools really made me feel like my gingerbread house had hope!
Also included in the kit are extra decorative pieces like this “brick” roller. There is also an attachment to roll spiders onto your dough, and at the end of the tool you can swap out ghost or bat stamps as well. This set definitely has some pretty sweet bells and whistles to get your spooky house looking creative before you even start decorating it!
I used some gel icing to outline the cookie cutter impressions in the house after I baked all the pieces. And I scored some really cute Halloween candy (like the bat lollipop and bones!) at the Dollar Tree.
Decorating the spooky gingerbread house (and eating it of course!) were the easy parts!
As much as I wanted to completely deck out the whole house I am evidently not skilled enough to put together a non pre-fab gingerbread house! The recipe was so easy to create, the cookie cutters were easy to use but I totally failed at putting the house together! I finally ended up smearing icing all over the back of the walls and sticking it to a cardboard box – haha! If you’ve never created a gingerbread house from scratch – be forewarned – it’s not as easy as it looks!! BUT I love that you can use these gingerbread house cookie cutters year-round for all sorts of themes so the set is pretty awesome. Just don’t ask me to make anything too fancy! 🙂 Here’s 25% off coupon to goodcook.com for any Sweet Creations Halloween product. Use CODE: HAUNTED23. You can find Good Cook on Facebook and on Twitter @goodcookcom.
Thanks to Good Cook I have 2 Sweet Creations Gingerbread Cutter sets to give away to my readers!! Whoo! Please note, the giveaway does not end until October 31st and it can take up to 10 weeks to receive prizes for this contest so this would be a great project for the upcoming holidays!
GIVEAWAY:HAS ENDED
Congratulations to our Winners:
Michele C.
Dawn M.
TO ENTER: Just leave a comment below letting me know what you would want your gingerbread house to look like or who would help you build it!
Giveaway Fine Print Details: Open to US only. Giveaway ends at midnight October 31, 2013. All prizes will be awarded 8-10 weeks after the giveaway has ended. Prizes are supplied and by Good Cook. One prize per household for this Good Cook Pumpkin Carving event. If someone wins on 2 or more blogs, they-or their family members- cannot win a second prize from another blog in this event. If a household has won a prize in a Good Cook event they can’t win again for 6 months. Good Cook will confirm that winners are eligible and will disqualify anyone who has won more than once. You must be 18 or older to win. Good Cook reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal value if sufficient inventory is not available.
I would let my 2 children help decorate and it would look like ond of the houses from Scooby Doo.
My girls (9 and 7) LOVE decorating for halloween and love baking….this has “girl project” written all over it! I love this idea because I always buy 3 kits at Trader Joes at Christmas time so we each have one to put together…this makes much more sense!
I would love to do this with my daughters and maybe even my class.
That is cool Halloween house. What a cool idea! My kids will love doing this!
I would want a gingerbread house similar to my classroom, but a spookier version.
Each year my father and I work on a gingerbread house together. We enjoy coming up with some rather creative designs together. One year we molded a little dog and a fire hydrant out of gum drops and, yes, the dog was doing what dogs love to do to fire hydrants! For some reason we have never thought about doing a haunted gingerbread house but I am definitely going to suggest one this year. With our sense of humor, it will probably be more silly than haunted 🙂 Thanks for the great idea!
I would definitely be making this with my kids. We’ve been using the pre-fab kits and although they’re fine for decorating, I’d never want to actually eat one. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making ours from scratch so this would be awesome.
I would make it with my two sons. It would be full of candy corn candy apples and tone of Halloween colors with a four year old creative style
I would love to create a house with my 4 year old nephew. We have mad gingerbread men, but this would be even better!
Our gingerbread house would be a haunted house centerpiece. Then we would do a joyeaux Noel one too. We love baking and decorating from Halloween to Christmas. We even have three family members with bdays in that time frame too. Lots of celebrating happening. My two girls would help with baking and decorating.
I would have brea help me build it. mrsrodjac at hotmail dot com
I really like the idea of a spooky house!!! I teach Spanish so to incorporate it in my class I will label it in Spanish!!!
I would love to build this with my son! I love that it is a cutter and you can use your own dough! I would love to win this, but will have to buy it even if I don’t!
I would have my two kids help me!
My fiance and I will use this as part of our Halloween tradition now and when we have a family. We will be married before Halloween next year. I have missed much of the Halloween festivities these past few years (its such a fun holiday) due to reoccurring chronic health issues. Something like this can be done at home on my time with my new family 😀
I would make this with my 3 kids and I would want the house to be colorful and fun, not spooky.
I would decorate with my daughter and have it be spooky
my son & daughter would Love to build this!
I would get my kids and husband to help build it. This would be so much fun!
I’d love for my son to help me. He’s never built a gingerbread house before.
My 4 year old son is a tactile learning and would love building a gingerbread house and getting his hands into the dough molding and shaping. It’s a great way to teach colors (candy), shapes, and sizes! Plus you can eat your creation when your through! YUMMY!!!
I’d love to build this with my two youngest step-daughters. It’d be fun quality time. Thanks.
partymix25(at)hotmail(dot)com
I would let my students help me build it….it would look like a school house! I think that would be fun to do!
I would let my 3 and 5 year old boys decorate it.
I would have my sweetheart help me build a gingerbread house.
my son would love to build this.
I have five grandkids five years and under who love arts and crafts. The best part is I also have a teen daughter who loves to do this type stuff with her nieces and nephews so I get to watch all the fun stress free.