Hellobee

While I like the idea of fun, festive holiday traditions for my kids, some of the classic Christmas activities are a little labor-intensive for my current lifestyle. To this day, my mom bakes off spiced cookie walls and roofs to make quintessential gingerbread houses, but this year I’m not up for the challenge. Enter: graham cracker “gingerbread” houses. Approximately a hundred times easier and just as fun.

Each graham cracker house uses 4 sheets of crackers. Using a serrated knife, cut two of the sheet in half (so they’re squares) – these will serve as the left and right walls and the roof. For the remaining two sheets, use a serrated knife to cut as pictured below – these will be the front and back walls.

To “glue” the pieces together and to decorate the houses, make a simple royal icing. Start with 1 pound of powdered sugar stirred with 1/3 cup pasteurized egg whites, and add 1 tablespoon egg whites at a time if needed until the icing is very thick but still pourable.

Use a pastry bag with a small piping tip or a zip-top bag with one corner just barely snipped off to pipe the icing onto the edges of the graham cracker pieces and glue the house together. I like to use the zip-top method (or even seal it with a twist tie) for the kids when they decorate – see the second-to-last image below for a visual.

Some other tips and considerations:

• For little kids, assemble the houses ahead of time so the “glue” is dry by decorating time; older kids can build their own graham cracker gingerbread houses.
• If you build the houses ahead of time, store the royal icing in the fridge in an airtight container so it doesn’t dry out, and bring it back to room temperature before decorating.
• Lightweight candy works best.
• Consider more wholesome decorations. Ours were loaded with sugar, but I later saw Amy of Yummy Toddler Food make healthier gingerbread houses decorated with less sugary options like seeds, dried fruit, and cereal.
• For easier clean-up, lay down newspaper or some other protective material on your table. I did not do this and it took a long time to scrub all the royal icing off of my dining table.

This was an easy (despite making them for 7 kids!) and fun project that I would definitely do again. The small graham cracker houses were easy for our guests to take home, and, as you can imagine, the little ones has a blast making eating them.