Okay, guys, today let’s talk about how to make gingerbread house windows. It’s not as hard as you might think, but it does take a little bit of time and patience.
First things first, I started by making sure I had all my materials ready. Of course, I already had my gingerbread house assembled and ready to decorate. The key here is that everything on your gingerbread house has to be edible. So, I needed something for the windows that I could eat. I decided to use hard candy since I only wanted to make simple window designs. I also found some Posca markers to decorate the window frames.
So, for the windows, I grabbed a bunch of hard candies. I used Jolly Ranchers because they come in different colors, and they melt really well. I crushed the candies first. This makes them melt faster and more evenly. I just put them in a bag and smashed them with a rolling pin.
Next, I needed to create the window openings. I simply cut some holes in my gingerbread house walls. There are some other methods you can try, but I went with the classic hole-in-the-wall approach. Make sure you do this before baking the gingerbread, it is much easier to do when the dough is soft. For my simple square windows, I used a small knife to carefully cut out the shapes I wanted.
-
Crush the Candies
-
Fill the Windows
-
Bake the Gingerbread
-
Cool and Decorate
Put the hard candies in a ziplock bag.
Use a rolling pin or a meat mallet to crush the candies into smaller pieces.
Lay the gingerbread pieces flat on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Spoon the crushed candies into the window cutouts.
Make sure the candy is evenly distributed and fills the entire cutout.
Preheat your oven according to your gingerbread recipe.
Bake the gingerbread pieces with the crushed candy in the windows.
Keep a close eye on them, as the candy will melt faster than the gingerbread bakes.
Once the gingerbread is baked and the candy has melted and set, let everything cool completely.
Now you can decorate around the windows. Use icing, small candies, or even those Posca markers I mentioned to add frames or other details.
Once the candy cooled and hardened, it looked just like stained glass. It was pretty cool! Then came the fun part – decorating! I used some icing to pipe on some details and make the windows look even fancier.
And there you have it, my gingerbread house windows! They turned out pretty neat if I do say so myself. It’s a fun and tasty way to add some extra flair to your gingerbread house. Give it a try, and let me know how it goes!
