Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The activity of the day

We spent about an hour this afternoon making graham cracker "gingerbread" houses.

The ingredients:
  • graham crackers (about 7 crackers per house)
  • Royal Icing (slowing mix 5 cups of powder sugar into 3 egg whites. Beat for 10 minutes)
  • candy
  • sprinkles (kids love these, Moms on clean up duty don't)
  • plastic baggies
  • paper plates
  • a few friends
  • a healthy dose of patience
  • an already messy floor (if your floor is spotless to start with, it won't be when you're done!)
  • toddlers who are napping, thus greatly reducing the amount of patience needed

Optional ingredient (not highly recommended)


a crawling baby who scampers along the floor, in her utmost glory, eating whatever is dropped.

Scoop some icing into a baggie. Squish it all down into one corner and cut that corner off so you can squirt the icing out in a nice, clean way. Squeeze from the top of the bag, sliding all the icing down to the cut corner. Give each kid their own baggie of icing to use. This will greatly reduce the amount of squabbling.

Put together the basic structure of the house, making sure you have plenty of icing. (Spend a few moments wondering why 8 year old daughter has a winter hat on. Bad hair day?) Let the house sit for at least 5 minutes so the icing can set. If you skip the step, you will have structures falling down left and right, causing much strife among the builders.



Let the kids go to town attaching candy to their houses with icing.




Admire finished houses and happy grins on the faces of the kids.



Line houses up on counter for Dad to see.
Spend the rest of the afternoon chasing sprinkles across the floor and shooing little hands away from the finished product. (we may need to find an alternate place to store them)

2 comments:

jen said...

Darling houses! We made a big one out of gingerbread, but it's already been undecorated by little sneak thieves...

Sarah Niemela said...

So fun and you took great pictures too! And didn't you know girls love hats??