Gingerbread Cookie House with a Candy Lawn

I made this gingerbread cookie & candy house with fruit leather siding for Easter in 2013 for a couple that is dear to my heart.

That year, they bought their first home in New England.

So I made a gingerbread house replica of it.

First, I cut out a paper template of the design. I changed the roof a little to make it more simple so that it would be easier to make out of cookies. Then, I used each paper template piece to trace the parts out of gingerbread house dough.

My go-to recipe is included in the following kit
Gingerbread House Dough Recipe & Baking Instructions

Here are the pieces after they were baked.

Gingerbread Cookie House with a Candy Lawn

Note that some house pieces were dark brown and some were light brown because I used two different batches of gingerbread house dough.

To give the effect of red siding, I used overlapping strips of strawberry fruit leather. It was “glued” down using royal icing.

The porch columns were made of rolled cookie wafers and the porch rails were made of royal icing-dipped pretzels.The front steps and the chimney were piles of cookies and chocolate. There were also chocolate dipped caramels and toffee squares lining the base of the house.

All of the piping around the edges and windows was done in chocolate and royal icing. I abide by the icing recipes and assembly instructions within this kit: