Haunted Gingerbread Display
Introduction: Haunted Gingerbread Display
I truly believe Halloween is the best time of the year, I go all out every year! But this year is extra special because I’ve been given so many amazing opportunities to celebrate and create, and I want to share that with all of you!
This year I decided to make a gingerbread house display! Why settle for making just one house, when you could make three different, equally amazing and unique houses?
I know what some of you may be thinking, that’s a lot of work, I’m not artistic, I can’t make something like that, but let me tell you, I wasn’t always good either, I used to struggle a lot.
My first gingerbread house crumbled to pieces after five minutes. Even doing this project as you’ll see as you get further in, one of the houses almost completely fell apart, it was a total disaster! But I didn’t give up! I made mistakes, I learned from them, and I regrouped and ended up making something even cooler than my original vision. I felt that way with all the houses actually, they all had different issues or setbacks an did not meet my initial ideas, but in the end, they actually exceeded what I had in mind!
So if nothing else, I hope you can learn from some of the mistakes I made too! And I hope I can help show you that you don’t have to be amazing on day one to create something great by day five.
So without wasting any more time, let’s get into it! There are kind of a lot of steps and supplies for this project. But a few can be simplified, substituted, or ignored all together!
The first thing that’s important to know is that, while yes, these houses are technically completely edible, there are a few reasons that you would want to think twice about that:
1) most gingerbread houses are made with construction gingerbread, which is not the same as the gingerbread cookies grandma always made. 644
It’s a very dense and strong dough, so it’ll hold up structurally.
2) this project takes a bit of time to do it well and get all the details. So the house sits out for a long period of time, especially with the amount of time it takes for royal icing to dry. But hey, do what you want! That’s just my advice.
So I’ve broken everything down to what you will need supplies wise for each house individually, that way you can choose to only build one house or all three. I’ve also grouped the supplies that you’ll use for every house to make it easier.
Here we go!
Supplies
Every house basic ingredients:
-flour
-sugar
-shortening
-eggs
-molasses
-ginger
-cinnamon
-clove
-nutmeg
-egg whites or merengue powder
-powdered sugar
-gel food colors
-parchment paper
-cookie sheets
-rolling pin
-paring knife
-scissors
-poster board/cardboard
-ruler
-pencil
-ribbon
-wooden board
-lights(optional)
-paint brushes
-piping bags and tips
House #1: Zombie Manor (we’ll abbreviate this to H1)
-gelatin sheets
-tombstone mold
-candy melts(white and black)
-modeling chocolate(lime green, dark green, red, pink, and white.)
-black petal dust
-cocoa powder
-corn syrup
-red gel food color(A LOT)
-Oreos for dirt
House #2: Dead Man’s Dwelling(we’ll refer to this one as H2)
-marshmallows
-brick impression mat
-isomalt
-skull mold
-spider mold
-Hershey’s mini bars
-edible grass and dirt(recipe below)
-candy melts(white, ivory, and black)
-fondant(black and red)
-thin floral wire
-cocoa powder
House #3: Green House of Horrors(this one will be H3)
-edible grass
-gelatin sheets
-modeling chocolate(three shades of green, red, and white)
Step 1: Inspiration
So the first thing we need to do is get some ideas and inspiration for the houses. For me, this was tricky, because I couldn’t find any one example that was like exactly what I was looking for, but I kept looking, made some collages, and got my ideas. 706