No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids

by Lisa Anderson

Overview

No more complex store-bought kits. No more lopsided barn that was supposed to be Prince Charming's castle. Just fun with the family while constructing fanciful gingerbread houses with graham crackers, frosting, cookies, and candies of all varieties. With graham cracker building blocks and straightforward instructions, families can create everything from Fire House to Tiki Hut and Swiss Chalet to Mermaid Palace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781423614869
Publisher:	Smith, Gibbs Publisher
Publication date:	09/01/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	4 - 15 Years

About the Author

Lisa Turner Anderson is a writer, editor, and avid crafter. She is also the author of No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids. Lisa lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Read an Excerpt

Mermaid Palace

1/3 batch white royal icing

1/3 batch purple royal icing

2/3 batch seafoam-green royal icing

29 vanilla sandwich cookies

3 sugar cones

Smarties

1 To make the short tower, use white icing to glue seven sandwich cookies together in a stack. Place a sugar cone upside down on top. Repeat to make the middle tower, this time using ten sandwich cookies. Repeat again to make the tall tower, this time using twelve sandwich cookies.

2 Cover the tower tops with purple icing and the tower bottoms with seafoam-green icing. Make the windows using Smarties for the windowpanes and purple icing for the window frames.

3 Make sea anemones using sour gummy worms cut in half. Make a sea sponge using upside-down gumdrops. Make seaweed using green sour straws.

Decorations

sour gummy worms

gumdrops

green sour straws

candy seashells

Table of Contents

Getting Started 7

Easy Candy Cottage 13

Lollipop Lane 14

Sweetheart Cottage 17

Fairy Tree House 18

Easter Bunny House 21

Mermaid Palace 24

Cozy Cabin 27

Dutch Windmill 30

Tiki Hut 33

Big Red Barn 35

Caribbean Bungalow 39

Firehouse 41

The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe 45

Swiss Chalet 47

Blue Dollhouse 51

Mushroom Gnome Home 55

Igloo 56

Seven Dwarf's Cottage 59

Haunted Mansion 62

Santa's Castle 66

Dracula's Castle 71

Silly Polka-Dot House 74

Pink Castle in the Clouds 77

Editorial Reviews

Not only does this book give kids a chance to play with food, but it also gives them the opportunity to learn math (namely fractions), introductory architecture, and construction skills. The designs presented cover a range of themes with lots of opportunities to focus on secular and Christian holidays. This book could have benefited from more visual step-by-step instructions, but overall the directions are simple and easy to understand.I Would Give This to Anyone working with elementary school-age children. Katie Dunneback, "Holiday Cooking and Crafting", Booksmack!, 11/4/2010

Library Journal - BookSmack!

Gr 6 Up—Often the word "no-bake" in a title is a clue that the recipes are simple, which is not the case here. The no-bake means that the houses are made of graham crackers and similar cookies, stuck together using "glue" concocted of egg whites or meringue powder. Front matter explains how to cut graham cracker shapes carefully and how to make and use icing "glue" and offers tips for decorating with candy and more. Each of 23 recipes is accompanied by a large color photo showing the imaginative and appealing hous. The first one, for an "Easy Candy Cottage," is fairly simple, but things get progressively more complicated. Here's a typical instruction from the first sentence of step 2 for making the "Seven Dwarfs' Cottage": "'Glue'" a quarter cracker perpendicular to the front of the house, a fourth of the way in from the right side." Basic diagrams offer a bit of help, but overall these projects will require concentration, patience, and a strong set of fine-motor skills. Children younger than age 13 will definitely need an older partner. Simpler instructions for decorated edible houses can easily be found elsewhere, both in book form and online. Unless you have some serious confection construction fans, you can pass on this one.—Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

School Library Journal