My 2009 Gingerbread House

Okay, I'm not going to go through ALL the steps, but here I have traced around the cardboard templates I made into the dough. This dough was about 1/4 of an inch thick.

For the tiny houses, I made the dough as thin as I could, roughly 1/8 of an inch, maybe even 1/16th. I cut around the paper templates and baked it for less time than the regular dough. I saved this step until all the regular sized pieces were baked, in case I didn't have enough dough.

Here are the tiny ones baked.

Here are some of the regular sized pieces baked and cooling.

Before assembly, I knew I wanted to try lighting the house from within, so I rigged up a couple of bright LEDs to a battery pack with a switch that could be hidden behind the house.

Now my least favorite part...assembly. I have the worst luck with Royal Icing. I found a good recipe, but I think I should have added more icing sugar. It finally set up hard enough, but I had to support the sides for hours with jars and bottles!

At long last, it was finished! You can see the other tiny one I made to the left. Making the tiny ones gave me something to do while waiting for the large one's icing to set.
I call this my least favorite part because you can't start decorating until the roof and walls are secure....and they seemed to take forever to solidify.

Here is a shot of the battery pack behind the house.

The lights are ON....and for some weird reason, the yellow "fruit-roll-ups" I used to make the window panes show up as green! The LEDs must have a strange effect on them.

Oh well, not bad for the first one I've done in about 10 years. I'll have to make them on a more regular basis to perfect my Royal Icing making skills.