Have you ever wondered how big you can make a gingerbread house? Well, so did we until recently!
We made the biggest gingerbread house we’ve ever created, standing tall at 3ft and just under 3ft wide for a client in London who challenged us to make something spectacular for his dining table.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a challenge, particularly getting it up to the city but suffice to say it arrived in one piece and the client was delighted.
And having learned a lot on this build I am pretty confident we could go bigger should anyone ever want something life size shall we say!
We built the prototype out of foam core within an afternoon but the actual build took place across three weeks with a further ten days allowed to make sure it really set. We used foam core supports inside and in the roof btu the vast majority of it is edible, even the windows. The house all lights up inside and weighs in excess of 25kg aka bloody heavy! Decoration was a combination of fondant and royal icing piping to give it a really festive, happy feel.
Here are some in progress shots of the build
I had the best of intentions to film the process but never managed to get it sorted. Need to improve my video skills somewhat.
But if you’re interested in how we did it, here goes:
We used a foam core prototype to decide on size and scale and make sure all pieces fit together. We then cut pieces of dough to about half the size of each foam core piece and cut our windows (our ovens simply aren’t big enough right now to bake any larger)
These pieces had to be joined together to make the larger pieces you see on the house so we used brown royal icing and hid the joins with festive garlands. What you can’t see are the inch thick dowels that run the length of each piece, also cemented into place to lend it stability, especially for transport. Royal icing eventually sets rock hard but it does take a few days to reach that stage.
We used more gingerbread inside to brace each level and then added a horizontal piece of foam core at first and second floor heights to add further strength.
The roof itself was made of foam core overlayed with very thing gingerbread tiles to reduce the weight a little.
Many of the panels we decorated flat then assembled upright rather than being decorated in situ.
The house was finished off with lots of snow effects and fondant accents.
The windows are all rice paper, piped with royal icing – definitely something you should do flat rather than upright – gravity is not your friend!!!
And that’s it! If you want to learn more about building a gingerbread house from scratch why not try our Gingerbread Bootcamp where we explain a lot of the methods we use to bring our creations to life.
Biggest Gingerbread House We’ve Ever Made!
Have you ever wondered how big you can make a gingerbread house? Well, so did we until recently!
We made the biggest gingerbread house we’ve ever created, standing tall at 3ft and just under 3ft wide for a client in London who challenged us to make something spectacular for his dining table.
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a challenge, particularly getting it up to the city but suffice to say it arrived in one piece and the client was delighted.
And having learned a lot on this build I am pretty confident we could go bigger should anyone ever want something life size shall we say!
We built the prototype out of foam core within an afternoon but the actual build took place across three weeks with a further ten days allowed to make sure it really set. We used foam core supports inside and in the roof btu the vast majority of it is edible, even the windows. The house all lights up inside and weighs in excess of 25kg aka bloody heavy! Decoration was a combination of fondant and royal icing piping to give it a really festive, happy feel.
Here are some in progress shots of the build
I had the best of intentions to film the process but never managed to get it sorted. Need to improve my video skills somewhat.
But if you’re interested in how we did it, here goes:
We used a foam core prototype to decide on size and scale and make sure all pieces fit together. We then cut pieces of dough to about half the size of each foam core piece and cut our windows (our ovens simply aren’t big enough right now to bake any larger)
These pieces had to be joined together to make the larger pieces you see on the house so we used brown royal icing and hid the joins with festive garlands. What you can’t see are the inch thick dowels that run the length of each piece, also cemented into place to lend it stability, especially for transport. Royal icing eventually sets rock hard but it does take a few days to reach that stage.
We used more gingerbread inside to brace each level and then added a horizontal piece of foam core at first and second floor heights to add further strength.
The roof itself was made of foam core overlayed with very thing gingerbread tiles to reduce the weight a little.
Many of the panels we decorated flat then assembled upright rather than being decorated in situ.
The house was finished off with lots of snow effects and fondant accents.
The windows are all rice paper, piped with royal icing – definitely something you should do flat rather than upright – gravity is not your friend!!!
And that’s it! If you want to learn more about building a gingerbread house from scratch why not try our Gingerbread Bootcamp where we explain a lot of the methods we use to bring our creations to life.