Though I've baked actual gingerbread in the past, this time there was no baking involved.
When you're short on time or have tons of other stuff to do, graham crackers are a very convenient substitute. , and though we kept it simple this time around, they can be assembled into very elaborate structures.
To begin, you must have the right kind of icing. Royal Icing dries hard pretty quickly, which is imperative for holding the walls of your structures together. It also securely holds candies to the houses.
Jericho made the Picasso-esque house in the upper left. Cousin S made the one in the upper right. Judah and I assembled the one on the bottom left.
Jericho, our resident artist, said after looking at the three completed houses together, "Everyone is going to think Judah made mine and I made yours", and sure enough, when his friends arrived that evening, they all said that very thing, lol.
And just to clarify, that would be the pointy ice cream cones, not cones of sugar.
We make the trees at our annual Youth Group Christmas parties.
We line a couple of long tables with festive Christmas wrapping paper, give each person a paper plate and a cone, set out bowls of candy and few bags of fresh Royal icing down the length of the tables, and (as HisGirl would say) POW! Super-easy group activity!
