So I Made A Store Bought Gingerbread House -Completely Vegan

And… it’s adorable!!! It’s not perfect & I definitely learned some stuff, like cake decorating is not easy, haha. Not even a little.

I’ve never ever made a Gingerbread House before but when I was scrolling my Twitter feed I saw the cutest Pink Gingerbread House & thought, “damn, that looks cute. I want to make one”!

I thought about making it from scratch but quickly decided for my 1^st attempt I wanted to make it a little easier on myself so I went for store bought. And guess what, another “Accidentally Vegan” surprise! The Gingerbread kits from the ones I looked at were all animal by-product free. Candy on the other hand was a little more difficult. I went to my local Bulk Barn because they always have all of the candy AND they list all of the ingredients, which was super important & made the searching/choosing that much easier.

Here are some ingredients to watch out for:

1. Gelatin – sucks! Too many candies & just stuff in general has gelatin and it sucks. Basically gelatin comes from boiling water with animal bones, skin, tendons, and ligaments. It’s what makes Jell-O jello-y & what makes candy squishy.

2. Shellac – also known as glaze, Confectioner’s Glaze, natural glaze, or pure food glaze. It’s basically crushed up bugs that are used to give a shiny “glazed” finish to candies & baking toppings, etc.

3. Beeswax – this one is annoying like gelatin because you wouldn’t think it needs to be in there but it is. It’s often used as a coating in candies mainly.

4. Carmine – also known as Cochineal. This ingredient is mainly used for red candies and it comes from more crushed up bugs & beetles.

5. Lactic Acid – this one is a bit of a grey zone because a lot of companies might actually use a vegan formula naturally. It might have been cheaper for them to use the vegan formula or it was all they had access to, whatever not important but, it’s kind of hard to find out which they use. You can try reaching out to the company but they don’t normally get back to people. Lactic Acid is used as a food preservative mainly.  Anyways, It’s time to build this pretty little Gingerbread House…

First, I laid out all of the house pieces to get acquainted with how they fit/work. One thing to note, the store bought pieces don’t break very nicely. You might have some patching up to do (I did). You could even try warming the gingerbread up first before cutting. Once I had my somewhat plan set I moved ahead.

I knew I wanted my main house to be pink so I used the pink squeeze tube with icing sugar that hardens, mainly used for cookies I guess. Once the big house was finished I did two other little houses in the pink as well. I saved some for decorating later.

One of the packs came with a green fondant. Not in a green colour that I was planning on using. But I also bought some food dust in 3 colours, all pearl finishes, pink, purple, & white. So I thought maybe if I dusted the pearl white onto the green I could change the tone of the green & not have it go to waste.

I’ve never rolled out fondant before but it’s not very easy haha. I’m sure this wasn’t the best quality fondant also but ya, it was hard! After I rolled it out I laid one of the little houses over it & cut around the pieces. Then I wet the cut fondant & stuck it to their matching house pieces. I had enough green fondant left over to do a Gingerbread Tree. Then I made a little wash with the white pearl food dust & water and brushed it over the green. After it had dried I used my finger to buff even more dust to really amp up the frost.

I left the icing & fondant dry before assembling them all together. I just used the basic white icing piped along the edges & put together all of the walls and the roofs last. Then I let them dry overnight.

The next day, I started the decorating process. I also asked for my mom to join in because 1. There’s so much to do & 2. I’ve never done this with her before so I thought it would be something fun and cute for us to enjoy together.

I started with the smaller village houses because I didn’t want to mess up on the larger house haha. I used some of the cake icing & different icing tubes and formulas to decorate the roofs, doorframes, & edges etc.

Something to note; the icing can get super thick & cake-y looking, I know, I know, it’s a gingerbread house and a lot of people cake that sh*t on but… I think if I did it again I would find more of that hard drying cookie icing or more fondant to decorate all the walls & rooflines. I prefer a cleaner more streamlined look myself.

After I finished toying around with some of the little guys, I moved onto the big house. I knew I wanted to use these little candy coated licorice pieces as bricks or stones along the corners & bottoms of the walls. So first I had to cut those in half & sliced down the middle to look like little bricks. Then I used the fluffy cake icing to lay the “grout” down. Using that icing as my grout/glue I brick laid the licorice candy.

And then guess what…

Literally as soon as I had completed all of those bricks, the house like imploded on itself and completely broke apart. Fortunately nothing was too damaged & I was able to salvage it. It just took waaaaaaaay longer than it should have. While the walls lay to dry I used the pearl white food dust to coat the roof & then used a thin line of white icing to scallop the roof. Once that all dried, I re-iced the entire house to stick together and it is currently drying over night, again. Hopefully for the last freaken time though!

Tomorrow I will place them all together and add all of the finishing touches. Ps. The two little homes my mom did are so cute. She killed it.

I’m officially finished. The 3^rd and final day consisted of me putting “back” together the big main house & finishing it’s piping & touching up the “stone” façade. After all of the houses & décor items were complete I needed to find a big enough surface to place them all on together. I decided to use two large cutting boards with a clear garbage bag (which I will use when the holidays are over) over them so I could coat the “ground” in snow aka. fluffy icing. I didn’t have a ton of icing left over but I made it work.

I knew I wanted the big house dead center with an icy path winding down the boards with the other homes scattered around the pathway. Once I placed the big house I used a silicone spatula to draw out my icy path and then filled it with blue icing. I placed the rest of the homes, lined the path with marshmallows, & added snow build-up along the edges of the homes. I had some menthol/anise hard candies that I ground up in my mortar to use as ice shards & then I ground it up even more to sprinkle all over for added snow/ice effect.

For the final touch I used powdered icing sugar through a sifter to create a fresh powdered snow effect. And voila! I’m very pleased with how it all turned out. Like I said, I severely underestimated how much work goes into this. If I do it again next year I think I’ll tray making it from scratch. I also know which toppings & icings work better than others. Have you ever made a Gingerbread House? How did that go? Haha! Would love to know in the comments down below.

A Vegan Gingerbread House & Village – First Experience