Fun at Grandma's place... making every moment special

Decorating Christmas gingerbread cottages with kids

4/12/2014

Do you have a Christmas checklist of festive activities to complete with your grandkids? No? Oh... well, I'm probably too structured, but I love checklists, even at Christmas. I don't always manage to complete every item but it's great to see how many we can do together.

The older grandkids like checking the list, too, to see what's next or to choose an activity.

Free, Christmas checklist of Top 20 things to do to celebrate the Christmas season.
If you don't have a Christmas activity checklist, you might like to download and use mine. (See file download below)

Anyway, item number 5 on my Christmas checklist is 'Decorating a gingerbread cottage.' This is a really popular activity in the lead-up to Christmas.

Some of my friends like to cook their own gingerbread cottages. They are true heroes. I'm afraid I take the easy approach and buy a kit.

Kits make life easier
Fortunately, my grandkids don't seem to mind. I even managed to find a gingerbread cottage kit that contained 5 small cottages instead of one large one. Perfect!

You'll probably find that your gingerbread cottage kit contains the icing in a plastic tube ready to assemble the pre-cooked pieces.

Icing recipe
If not, and you have to make your own icing, try this:
You'll need.. * 2 egg whites * 3 cups pure icing sugar.
Instructions..
Using an electric mixer, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add icing sugar while beating constantly until thick.

Spoon 1/2 cup remaining icing into a ziplock bag. Trim 1 corner of bag and pipe windows and doors on house and frost on roof edges. Allow to dry.

Older kids can do some of this
Pipe along the edges of each piece of the gingerbread cottage and press firmly together. You might like to use tins of food to support the sides of the cottage until they are firm.

Spoon remaining icing into a ziplock bag. Pipe a little icing on the back of each lolly and attach to house to decorate. Dust roof with icing sugar.

Younger ones will just want to use the small lollies and candies to decorate.. but they still have fun!

Need some inspiration?