10 Baking and Decorating Tips

1. Cut out windows and doors from the rolled out, unbaked gingerbread dough.
Make them small as you want your walls to be strong.

2. Out of the extra dough, or if you make an additional batch, you can make additions to your house such as doors, a chimney, window shutters, gingerbread men and women, and more.

3. A nice touch for the windows is to make a stained glass effect. You can do this by breaking up hard candy and sprinkling it in window cutout before baking. Once it’s baked, it will melt and harden and look like a stained glass window. Make sure you either have a non-stick sheet pan or that you place tin foil underneath the window area.

4. Use the royal icing to stick decorations on your house and on your gingerbread men and women. Put the icing in several small throwaway pastry bags and you can do the decorating with friends and family.

5. Use pastry bags to pipe the "cement" to stick your walls together. It is much easier and you have more control over how much and where you put the frosting.

6. Use whatever candy you like, decorating is not limited to gum drops and red hots!

7. Separate the frosting into batches so that you can color some of it with food coloring.

8. Make sure to protect whatever surface you are building your house on. The frosting sticks like glue!

9. A tray is a good surface for the gingerbread house so you can parade it around for your guests.

10. This project does take time, so make sure you’ve set aside a full day to do it.

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