Halloween Gingerbread House + Royal Icing Recipe
Decorate a spooky cute Halloween Gingerbread House with an easy-to-find premade kit. Use all kinds of candies in different ways, add your own creative details, and try new design ideas with Halloween candy and royal icing.
Servings: 24
Calories: 100kcal
Equipment
- Halloween Gingerbread House Kit by Bakery Bling
- See's Candies assorted Halloween candy
Ingredients
Basic Decorating Royal Icing
- 3 cups powdered sugar confectioners sugar
- 2 large egg whites room temperature
- ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
- optional black, orange, purple or green food coloring
Construction Royal Icing Using Meringue Powder
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons meringue powder
- ¼ cup water (add more if needed)
- optional black, orange, purple or green food coloring
Instructions
Basic Decorating Royal Icing
- Mix ingredients well by hand or on medium speed for 5 minutes with a hand mixer. The icing is good for piping, and decorating but not strong for constuction.
- Store extra icing in a pastry bag or zip-top bag. Or covered in a bowl with plastic wrap. You can make a double batch of this recipe or add coloring like black, orange, purple or green! This icing is great for piping and flooding, but too thin for "gluing" on candies and holding the house pieces together.
Construction Royal Icing Using Meringue Powder
- In a medium mixing bowl, add the egg whites and whip until foamy. Add cream of tartar mix for about 30 more seconds. Add in powdered sugar gradually until completely mixed in, then you can turn the mixer to high speed. Whip for about 3-5 minutes until it becomes thick and the royal icing will hold its shape. Then add food coloring if desired. Use this to hold pieces of your gingerbread house together.
Assembling Your Gingerbread House
- Unpack the pieces, and lay them out. Most kits will have a front, back, two side pieces, and 2 roof pieces. Take a look at them, any rough edges can be smoothed out with your fingertips, and check for cracks, those can be fixed with construction royal icing.
- Grab a piece of paper and take some notes on the designs you really want, and some things you want to try!
- Lay each of the pieces in order that you are ready to decorate. My kit had two roof pieces with a diamond pattern embossed on them, so I piped black royal icing in those groves, then sprinkled yellow and orange jimmies. I did this over a piece of parchment paper to catch the extra sprinkles and reuse them.
- Knead the royal icing really well that should come in your kit, it works great at room temperature. Make some more of your own royal icing, which dries really hard for construction purposes. You can also add a color you like.
- If you are not going to eat the Halloween gingerbread house, use a glue gun to hold the pieces together.
- Once the pieces are decorated and dry, which takes about 8 hours, simply glue them together! That is what I did, and it was SO much easier, but with kids, they might want to eat it.
- You can buy some buttercream icing in a tube from the grocery store, but this would be for decorating accents, not to hold or glue the house together.
Video
Notes
Haunted Gingerbread House Decorating Tips
- Halloween "Christmas" Tree: Decorate sugar ice cream cones for Halloween "Christmas" trees with pumpkin presents underneath. Black royal icing or black buttercream will work for this, simply pipe a thick line up and around in a spiral. Then push on large and small balls of candy or sprinkles. Some orange and black candy bats came in the kit that I used as tree toppers and ornaments. Then add more colorful Halloween sprinkles, in orange, purple, and green into the wet frosting.
- Cobblestone Path and Porch: To decorate the front and back cobblestone walkway, use round black licorice candies from See's candies in Southern California. They are online if you want to take a peek. These are called Black Licorice medallions in their shop. I sprinkled green sanding sugar sprinkled in between the licorice.
- Criss Cross Roof: Pipe black royal icing from a piping bag in a cross diamond pattern then sprinkle use tiny Jimmie sprinkles for a great effect!
- House Windows: For the house shutters, black licorice medallions were just right with black store-bought black buttercream frosting and little orange bat candies as accents. For the window boxes, I placed a piece of black licorice. Piped black icing on the window panes and sprinkled sparkling black sugar.
- Front Door Pumpkin Topiaries: Use white frosting or royal icing, and stick a Mellocream pumpkin on top of an orange and white mint from See's candies. Then attach the candy eyes with white icing.
- White Bone Gummy Candies: These came in a box of candy I found at Homegoods TJ Maxx. They worked so well framing the windows and front door.
- Roof Line: Trim licorice pieces to cover the gap in the roof line and base of the house. Use scissors to cut the black licorice pieces.
- Make "Cookie" Dirt: Surround your house with cookie dirt, made from crushed chocolate wafers or Oreo cookies.
- Make Chocolate Tombstones: Take a look at my Halloween Graveyard Cake for all kinds of decoration tips for making tombstones, fences, trees, gates, and more! Or my Halloween Cupcakes, which have little white chocolate bones and tons of other ideas you could put on your gingerbread house.
- Fence: Make a candy corn fence with the white points sticking up,
- Pumpkin Patch: Make a pumpkin patch with crushed Oreos or graham crackers for the dirt, and Mellowcream pumpkin with green icing as the vines and stems.
- Window Shutters: Put crooked pieces of Oreo cookies and cream candy bars on as the shutters, and pipe on thin black cobwebs!
- House Pathway: Use cut pieces of cut black licorice and black icing to make a path.
- Tile The Roof: Tile the roof with mini shredded wheat cereal pieces, graham cracker pieces, mini chocolate bars, or other candy like candy corn.
- Haunted Halloween Gingerbread Base: I decided to put my house on a square plate. The cardboard might work if it is sturdy enough. I glued my house onto the plate with hot glue (but I am not eating it!) If kids will be eating it, try a strong paper plate or plastic plate, and use construction royal icing.
Nutrition
Serving: 24g | Calories: 100kcal | Carbohydrates: 25g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 0.005g | Sodium: 9mg | Potassium: 19mg | Sugar: 24g | Calcium: 1mg | Iron: 0.02mg