Welcome to the Harvest House. 

WATCH TUTORIALS ABOUT ROYAL ICING

This gingerbread house is mainly decorated with fancy icing work instead of candy.  Here are links to the various tutorials you’ll find referenced later in these instructions. Go ahead and watch them now, before you begin.

from Nadia of My Little Bakery.

Royal Icing Consistencies for Beginners video: click here

Lace Cookie Part5 video: click here

from Marian of Sweetopia

Click here for royal icing recipes on www.sweetopia.net.

Piping icing in cursive tutorial by Ali Bee

Ali Bee’s video tutorials can be seen here.

from SweetSugarbelle.

Click here to see here advice on finding the correct icing consistencies.

Here’s a link to Ali Bee with instructions for painting with the gold luster dust. 

 BAKE YOUR GINGERBREAD HOUSE PIECES

Click on the patterns page to see a list of all available patterns, or directly on this link Harvest House to access the exact pattern I used. Visit the Recipes Page to find my own formula for construction grade gingerbread dough. This Harvest House is a bit larger than my standard gingerbread house, so I made the cookies thicker for added strength. I used two and a half batches of dough.

The door is made from molded gingerbread. Here’s a link to the mold made by FMM, officially called the “Impression Mats Set 1 by FMM” Tree Bark and Brick

Bake a few tiny balls of gingerbread dough of varying sized to use as rocks for the front walkway path.

 

 MAKE ROYAL ICING

To save some time, I’m going to direct you to a royal icing recipe and tutorial from Marian of Sweetopia.

Click here for royal icing recipes on www.sweetopia.net.

You can see some of Marian’s fantastic-amazing-astounding gingerbread houses here.

You’ll want to make two consistencies of icing. Use medium thin icing to pipe the cursive text, scrollwork, dots, and floral wreath. There are links below in the decorating section to explain piping and icing consistencies.

 Use thick icing as cement to join the four walls and roof of the house.

For this Harvest House, use the Wilton paste or Americolor gel food color Ivory to achieve an off-white color. I tinted the entire batch of icing to make certain I wouldn’t use any stark white by accident.  The ivory base gives a nice fall color to the orange, green, yellow, and brown icings you’ll mix later.

DECORATE THE BACK OF THE HOUSE

You’ll need medium thin consistency royal icing for piping the “Give Thanks” text and the floral design.

I’m going to direct you to the blog tutorials of two master sugar artists for information on both icing consistency and piping text. These ladies are awesome cookie decorators and excellent teachers.  They know royal icing.

The first tutorial is from Ali Bee of Ali Bee’s Bake Shop

Piping icing in cursive tutorial by Ali B

Ali Bee’s video tutorials can be seen here

The second is from cookie legend SweetSugarbelle.

Click here to see here advice on finding the correct icing consistencies.

Brown paper is the perfect practice surface for piping on gingerbread. The white icing color contrasts strongly with the dark brown so you can see exactly what your design will look like on the actual cookie. Draw a circle on dark-colored paper to use as a practice sheet. I piped “Give Thanks” using PME tip #1 with ivory royal icing. 

The orange dot flowers are piped with medium consistency royal icing and a #5 round tip.  The yellow sunflowers are piped with medium thin consistency icing (same consistency as for the Give Thanks) and a #3 round tip.  The centers of the sunflower are piped with medium consistency light brown and a #2 round tip.

First, add the window and decorate around it with white dots and vines.

Use a turkey lacing pin, corsage pin, diaper pin, or non-toxic graphite pencil to etch a circle on the gingerbread. 

Use the circle as a guide for piping Give Thanks, then cover the marks with flowers, leaves, dots, etc.

The blue windows are leftover pastillage items from last December. Pastillage is made with powdered sugar, cornstarch, gelatin, and water. When the sugar dough is dried, it resembles Altoid mints, but with any flavor you care to add. Because dried pastillage contains no moisture or fat, it won’t spoil or go rancid.  It’s almost indestructible and lasts for years.  The pastiallage recipe makes a good amount, much more than is necessary for the windows on a single house, which is why I use it for mass production. I can crank out two years worth of windows in an afternoon.  If you don’t really need 100 windows though, save yourself the headache and use blue fondant.

***Hint: A much quicker way to mold the windows is to use blue fondant. ***

You can find the recipe and instructions for working with pastillage here under my post for creating homemade Necco wafers.

The front door mat is pastillage molded in a silicone floral mold, dried, then painted with gold luster dust.

 

DECORATE THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE

Add the blue fondant windows and gingerbread door first, then use decorating tips #10, #3, and #1 to pipe dots.

Pipe swirls, flowers, leaves, etc. to decorate around the windows and door.

.

DECORATE THE SIDES OF THE HOUSE

Use royal icing to attach round, blue fondant windows to the house sides. Pipe white dots with round tips #8, #3, and #2.

Use the orange, yellow, green and brown icing to add sunflowers, dot flowers, scrolls, etc. around the windows. See how the two sides have different designs? There’s absolutely no reason for them to match — you’ll never view both sides at the same time. Be creative!

DECORATE THE ROOF PANELS

Before you pipe the roof, take a look at this video tutorial from Nadia of My Little Bakery.

Royal Icing Consistencies for Beginners video: click here

Lace Cookie Part5 video: click here

Using the same medium thin consistency royal icing that you used for piping Give Thanks, pipe parallel lines across a roof panel.  These are approximately one centimeter apart.   I used round tip #1.  Turn the panel ninety degrees and pipe a perpendicular series of lines to create the grid.

Using medium consistency royal icing and tip #4, pipe four dots surrounding each intersection of the grid.

Pipe a single white dot right in the center of each cloverleaf quad of dots.

You can see in the above photo, I added brown dots in-between the grid lines, but they don’t really add much do they? I don’t think it was worth the trouble!

LET IT DRY

ADD GOLD HIGHLIGHTS

I used Ideale 586105 Powder Color Gold Dust, Inedible, product of Italy to add gold highlights to the roof dots and to some of the piping on the four house walls.  

Yes, the gold dust is officially inedible. And yes, so is the gold used on 95% of the fancy cookies and wedding cakes you’ll find on pinterest.  There are no photos of wedding guests painstakingly removing the gold encrusted fondant (as you would the skin of  salmon) before consuming the cake, but this is exactly what they should be instructed to do.

There are FDA approved luster dusts, but I haven’t found one worth using. They’re not as shiny. I’m perfectly comfortable giving a house away with a few metallic embellishments and strict instructions not to eat the shiny bits!   FYI, those silver ball dragees  (sugar bb’s) fall into the same inedible category.

 You’ll also see gold foil wrapped Rolos and chocolate balls beside the front walkway. These two decorations will definitely need to be unwrapped before consumption.

It’s been my experience that many MANY gingerbread houses and their candy landscaping disappear mysteriously, without notice. It could be the kids, the dogs, an intruder with a sweet tooth……. Once that gingerbread house is unwrapped you’ve lost control over what candies may or may not be swallowed. So be absolutely clear with everyone if something can’t be eaten!

The large golden orbs on the house’s lawn are giant gumballs from Party City and are 100% edible.

Here’s a link to Ali Bee with instructions for painting with the gold luster dust.

The front door mat is pastillage molded in a silicone floral mold, dried, then painted with gold luster dust.

Let the gold highlights dry before assembling the house.

ASSEMBLE THE HOUSE

I’ll to direct you to my Valentine’s Day House Tutorial, Part 2 for assembly instructions.

The methods with both houses are identical.

 Make certain that the four walls have dried completely before you add the roof!! 

LET IT DRY

 ADD THE LANDSCAPING 

Dried parsley flakes have the right color and texture to suggest Fall grass. I used Wilton paste food color Juniper Green to match the parsley flakes. You could also use Leaf Green and add a bit of brown or black food coloring to give it the right look.

Working in small sections, spread a thin layer of icing and press in the flakes. I always start at the back of the house, to practice the technique, then finish in front.

Add a border of green royal icing shells.

Here’s a photo of the same icing and parsley used on the Halloween House.

Use light brown icing to add the gingerbread rocks that pave the front pathway.

Add some tip #363 trees, a few jellybean rocks, golden gumballs, and a gummy football.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Kristine