How Do You Stick a Gingerbread House Together? (2024)

FAQs

How Do You Stick a Gingerbread House Together? ›

Just melt the sugar in a pan over low heat. You want to allow it to turn brown, but make sure not to burn it (otherwise it won't taste so great). Then take your gingerbread house pieces, dip the edges in melted sugar and hold them together for a few seconds. That's it!

Fit Everything Together with Melted Sugar or Royal Icing

The second way is to use burnt sugar as your glue. Just melt C&H® Pure Granulated Cane Sugar in a pan on the stove, dip the gingerbread parts in and hold them together for a few seconds. Then, presto! You've created a solid house.

Hot/liquid sugar syrup

Melting together sugar and water and heating it for long enough will eventually create an extremely hot sticky sugar syrup that you can use to stick key pieces together. The upside, it sets quickly and hard.

Pipe generous snakes of icing along the wall edges, one by one, to join the walls together. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then allow to dry, ideally for a few hours. Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on.

Gingerbread houses fall apart when you're not using the right icing. The icing that comes in gingerbread house kits is not sticky enough and does not have the right consistency. It also takes too long to dry, which causes gingerbread houses to fall apart.

Just melt the sugar in a pan over low heat. You want to allow it to turn brown, but make sure not to burn it (otherwise it won't taste so great). Then take your gingerbread house pieces, dip the edges in melted sugar and hold them together for a few seconds. That's it!

Royal icing is the most reliable material for putting your gingerbread house together, but there are a few alternatives. Marshmallow fluff works admirably. If you have the money, you could buy edible glue intended for cake decorating. Or make your own edible glue with a water and tylose powder mixture or gum paste.

Don't get frustrated with gingerbread houses that fall apart! Glue them together instead for the easiest way to assemble gingerbread houses. Today we get to decorate gingerbread houses for our advent activity. I am so excited!

Sugar Glue for Gingerbread House.

If you feel like your gingerbread house still needs a little something special, go wild and add some additional sprinkles and candy. Add ornaments to your icing trees, add lights to your holiday garland or create a cute walkway out of jumbo sprinkles. If only decorating our real house for the holidays was that easy!

Do you decorate a gingerbread house before or after putting it together? ›

The biggest tip for a professional-looking gingerbread house is to decorate the pieces before you build the house. This lets you make everything perfectly even, and prevents awkward slipping of icing down the sides. One caveat: You want the decorations to dry completely before you build the house.

Gingerbread House Icing

Every house needs sturdy walls, right? Royal icing is the “glue” that holds the house together. It's also the glue adhering any candies to the walls and roof. As you can see in these photos, I covered the roof with royal icing before piping the buttercream on.

Mistake #2: Not resting your dough

After the gingerbread is cut out, Lomas recommends putting it into the fridge for at least 30 minutes and up to three days. Chilling the dough before it goes into a hot oven gives the butter a chance to firm up and reduces how much it spreads when baking.