How to Make a Gingerbread House: A Step-by-Step Guide
Making a gingerbread house is one of those Christmas traditions that can be as simple or as ambitious as you want it to be. Whether you are building a small classic cottage or an entire gingerbread village, the basic process is the same: choose a design, prepare your template, bake the pieces, assemble the structure and decorate it.
The key to a successful gingerbread house is doing a little preparation before you start. With a tasty gingerbread recipe, a good template and the right assembly technique, building your own gingerbread house from scratch is much easier than it might look.
In this guide, I’ll take you through the entire process step by step.
What You Need to Make a Gingerbread House
Before you start, gather everything you need. You don’t need any special gingerbread-house equipment, but a few basic tools will make the process much easier.
You will need:
- Gingerbread dough suitable for building - my favorite one is included with every template
- A gingerbread house template - Find all templates in my shop
- Baking paper - to put the gingerbread shapes on
- Rolling pin - to roll out the dough
- Baking trays and an oven - too cook the gingerbread dough
- Sharp knife and a pizza cutter - to cut the dough
- Metal spatula - To lift the dough onto your baking tray
- Grater - A grater is perfect to carefully grate off any excess gingerbread after the pieces have hardened.
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Mesh sieve - To make sure that the dough and royal icing don’t have any lumps. It can also be used when you have finished building to spread “snow” of powdered sugar over your gingerbread creation.
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Piping bags - for the icing decoration
Step 1: Choose Your Gingerbread House Design
Before making the dough, decide what you want to build.
A classic gingerbread house is a great place to start, particularly if this is your first time building with gingerbread. More experienced builders can experiment with larger houses, churches, castles, trains and other structures.
Using a template takes much of the guesswork out of the process. Instead of trying to work out dimensions yourself, you can concentrate on baking, assembling and decorating.
Browse our printable gingerbread house templates →
When choosing your design, also think about how much time you have. A simple house can be a relaxing afternoon project, while a larger gingerbread creation may be easier to complete over several days.
After choosing your design, you will have to print and cut it. Remember to print it at the correct scale (100%, not "fit to page") and cut out all the individual pieces.
Step 2: Make the Gingerbread Dough
Both homemade gingerbread dough and store-bought dough work well for making gingerbread houses. Still, nothing beats homemade gingerbread dough when it comes to flavor! My favorite recipe is included with all templates.
Prepare your dough according to your recipe and allow it to rest before baking. When you are ready to roll it out, aim for an even thickness across the entire piece, about 3-6 millimeters thick. Uneven dough can cause problems later: thin sections can become fragile or burnt, while very thick sections may turn out soft, which will make the gingerbread house collapse.
Step 3: Cut Out the Gingerbread Pieces
Roll the dough directly onto baking paper if possible. This makes it easier to transfer your pieces to the baking tray without distorting them.
Place the paper template pieces on top of the rolled dough and carefully cut around them with a sharp knife or pizza cutter. The pizza cutter is especially great for making straight lines on bigger pieces.
Try to make clean, straight cuts, particularly along edges that will eventually be joined together.
Remove the excess dough around each piece, but leave enough space between the individual pieces on the baking tray so they don’t bake into each other.
Step 4: Bake the Gingerbread
Bake the pieces according to your recipe.
The exact baking time will depend on the thickness and size of each piece, so keep an eye on it. Every dough and every oven is different, so cooking time may vary. Depending on the dough you might need to do a little trial and error until you find the right thickness and cooking time, so don't get discouraged if the first tray don't turn out perfectly.
Once baked, allow the gingerbread to cool completely on a flat surface. If you find that the pieces are still a little soft, they need more time in the oven.
Pro tip:
Even when you’ve cut everything carefully, gingerbread can spread or change shape slightly while baking. So before assembling your house, place adjoining pieces next to each other and check that the edges fit.
If an edge has expanded slightly, you can carefully use a fine grater to remove a small amount of excess gingerbread. This is an easy way to straighten an edge without risking breaking the entire piece.
Step 5: Add Windows
You don’t need to make windows for your gingerbread creations, but they add that extra touch! Make sure to do this step before you assemble and decorate the gingerbread house. I usually make clear windows or colored ones.
Read more about how to make gingerbread house windows here →
Step 6: Decorate Before Assembly
It’s time to decorate! For many, this is the most fun part, but it’s important to do it in the right order to get the best results.
If you want your creation to have windows, start with that step. After that, decorate the front of all the pieces with icing before assembling the house. It’s much easier to decorate all the walls and roof pieces with icing and candy before putting it together than after it’s assembled. This way, you’ll be able to be more precise with the icing, creating smaller details and cleaner edges.
See my best decorating tips here →
Step 7: Assemble the Gingerbread House
Now comes the exciting part: turning your flat gingerbread pieces into a house.
I highly recommend using melted sugar as adhesive. Many people use royal icing, but the truth is that it's just not strong enough. Melted sugar on the other hand, will keep it's structure for many weeks.
You can read more about how to use melted sugar here →
Step 8: Add the Final Touches
Now you can make the house completely your own.
I love bringing my gingerbread creations to life by letting light shine through the windows in the evening. The easiest solution is to place a battery-powered string of lights inside the house. It creates a soft and cozy glow.
Outside the house, you can add small gingerbread figures, sprinkle powdered sugar as snow, or use holiday figurines and decorations. The only limit is your imagination!
Many of my previous customers have sent in photos of how they decorated and added final touches to their creations. Click the link below to see the photo gallery.
See real gingerbread houses made using our templates →
Ready to Build Your Own?
If you’d like to skip the measuring and designing and get straight to the fun part, explore our collection of printable gingerbread templates.
Each template is designed to make building your own gingerbread creation straightforward, with printable pieces you can cut out and use as stencils for your dough.
From classic and easy gingerbread houses to a church, barn, castle, café, pickup truck, Christmas train and more, you can choose a project that matches the kind of Christmas creation you want to make.