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Dare to Make It: Holiday

Dare to Make It: Holiday


How to Make a Cookie House Village

comments (4) December 5th, 2010     

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Sister_Diane Diane Gilleland, contributor
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You can build this village to fit your mantel, a sideboard, or a shelf—it can take on any configuration that works in your space.
Kids as young as 7 or 8 should find it easy to assemble the houses and lots of fun to decorate them.
If you dont want to assemble a whole village, you can make individual houses for decorating or gift-giving.
You can build this village to fit your mantel, a sideboard, or a shelf—it can take on any configuration that works in your space.

You can build this village to fit your mantel, a sideboard, or a shelf—it can take on any configuration that works in your space.

Photo: Diane Gilleland
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If making a gingerbread house seems too time consuming, try this easier graham-cracker version. You may want to make enough for a whole village!

What you'll need:

  • Graham crackers (about seven per house)
  • Finely serrated knife
  • One batch of royal icing (see link below)
  • Cookie sheet
  • Pastry bag and icing tips (see note below)
  • Large sheet of sturdy cardboard
  • Aluminum foil
  • Rubber spatula
  • Assorted hard candy

A note on graham crackers: There are lots of different graham cracker brands available in stores. The ones I'm using for this project are square, with a little perforation down the middle. If your graham crackers are a different shape, you may need to experiment a bit and adapt the shape of your houses.

. . . And a note on royal icing: I like this recipe for royal icing. If you plan to eat these houses, then be sure to use powdered egg whites instead of raw ones—raw egg whites are not considered safe to eat.


 Cut tiny guide marks into the graham cracker.

So, to begin, you'll need to cut some graham crackers into shapes to construct your house. Graham crackers will cut nicely with a finely serrated knife—just use light pressure and a gentle, back-and-forth sawing motion. (And if you break a couple in the process—instant snacks!)

Begin by cutting one graham cracker in half along the perforation line. Then, place this half next to a full graham cracker, as shown. Use this half-cracker as a measuring tool to make two tiny cuts in the sides of the full graham cracker. Each cut should be placed at the top of that half-cracker.


 Use the guide marks to cut a peak into the top of the cracker.

Those little cuts, then, are your guides for cutting a peak in that whole cracker. Use the knife to cut from each mark toward the top, as shown. Cut two graham crackers like this—these are the front and back of your house.


 Trim the ends off two half-crackers.

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posted in: seasonal, kid crafts, gingerbread
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Comments (4)

candycandycandy writes: At my house, we make gingerbread houses annually with the kids. Lately though, since the Christmas season has become so busy, we started making Halloween houses instead. These are adorable; we use ghost peeps, gummi spiders, and all sorts of black and orange candy. For anyone who's interested, we usually get our candy from this site which saves us quite a bit of money.

http://www.candyfavorites.com
Posted: 11:04 am on May 17th
TeacherTeacher writes: Perfect timing for this post. We may graham cracker houses each year, this gives me some new ideas for our creations. I had never thought of adding a door like that. One of our favorites is using unwrapped tootsie rolls stacked up by the side of the house to look like a wood pile. With a bit of icing dripping down, these look like snowy logs.
Posted: 1:05 pm on December 23rd
ErinBried writes: These little houses are adorable. I'm overwhelmed thinking of a creating a ginberbread house, but using this method I could make a entire village (that my nephews would dismantle waayy too quickly). Thanks much for these beautiful instructions. Merry Christmas!
Posted: 9:17 pm on December 22nd
Average_Jane_Crafter writes: This is *awesome* Diane! I've seen versions of gingerbread villages (many thanks to you!) from elaborate set ups to simple graham cracker ones. I love these, though, because it's kind of in the middle. Still simple, but in an elaborate enough way that makes it special. And the picture of the icing peaks is like art! :)
Posted: 11:45 pm on December 6th
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