I have so many fond memories of making gingerbread houses. That was my family’s thing around Christmas!
And it wasn’t just a quint family thing, my mom blew it out and would invite all of our teachers from school and their families, plus other family friends. She would serve ribs and have tables set up everywhere with ready-to-decorate gingerbread houses. Bowls of candy would line the tables, plus frosting containers with these cute mini spreaders and of course washcloths for sticky fingers.
We’d do this every year. As we got older, the tradition changed a bit (no more ribs, haha) and now the decorating tables are filled with my nieces and nephews.
Since Ryan and I live out of the state from the rest of my family, it’s definitely something I miss doing so when Diamond of California asked me to make a gingerbread house I was like YES!!!!
I like to think I am kind of a gingerbread house pro. But, I owe that all to my mom! I learned how to make a gingerbread house out of an empty butter box and graham crackers from her and that’s the method I used for this nutty house.
Other people use those small milk cartons, but everyone buys butter so butter boxes are easy to come by! We’re also sharing the perfect recipe for gingerbread house ‘glue’. This stuff is like cement in the gingerbread people world.
We’ve included a few images of the house building process. I still like to build the house structure a day ahead of time, so the glue has time to harden, ensuring that the house is nice and sturdy for decorating, just like my mom did.
Once you’re ready to decorate, pick a large flat surface to glue the house to. Now we’re ready for the best part!!
I used pine nuts as stone for the siding on the house and used pecans as shingles for the roof. To jazz up the stones I used a paintbrush and a little bit of brown gel food coloring to paint some of them a darker shade.
I used cashew halves to make round windows on the back of the house.
The sidewalk is made with finely diced walnuts with larger walnut pieces lining the sides.
I added 2 pistachio pine trees – made of just frosting and pistachios! I love how those turned out! Plus there’s a super blobby snowman sitting in the front yard made out of frosting. The whole yard and snowman are sprinkled with white sanding sugar to add a snowy glisten effect.
There’s a cute fire pit made out of broken pretzel pieces, almond slices and some red, yellow, and orange sprinkles.
I loved using nuts to decorate the house, it gave the whole thing a more rustic vibe. I created this recipe in partnership with Diamond of California. Thank you for supporting the brands who make it possible for me to share recipes with you!
Not only are gingerbread houses fun to make, they’re fun to display! Mine is sitting on a shelf in our living room – hopefully Salsa, our cat, won’t get too curious!