Lighting Up 2019 with Silver and Gold: My New Year’s Gingerbread House

Happy New Year! I hope your 2019 is off to a great start! My vacation days from work are almost over, and I’m not looking forward to getting back to the grind. It’s been nice celebrating the holidays with family, staying up all night, spending more time at home with Flurry, blogging, and decorating gingerbread!

When I was shopping for a gingerbread house kit for Christmas this year, I bought two, because I thought the Wilton Ready-to-Decorate Dazzling Gingerbread House Decorating Kit would make a perfect New Year’s gingerbread house! The shimmer and sparkle of the gold and silver candies included in the kit inspired me to ring in 2019 with another gingerbread project. While red and green decorating candies were almost entirely sold out at the store, I was able to find plenty of silver and gold candies to add to the house. And I am glad I bought this kit, since the house that came with my Christmas gingerbread house kit was TINY. So I used the larger house from the silver and gold kit for my Christmas gingerbread house, and the smaller house from the Christmas kit for my New Year’s house. That ended up working out great, because I iced the entire roof of my New Year’s house and had a smaller area to cover than if I’d used the original house that came with the kit. Even though this was the smallest of the three gingerbread houses I made in 2018, it took the longest because I spent so much time on the roof and I didn’t use any timesaving pre-made icing decorations. I spent just over four hours total, which included set-up and planning my design. Below is a list of all the materials I used. All of the sprinkles are Wilton brand.

Supplies:

• Wilton Ready-to-Decorate Dazzling Gingerbread House Decorating Kit 2104-6867, which includes:
  • Pre-assembled gingerbread house
  • White Fondant
  • White Icing
  • Decorating Bag
  • Decorating Tip
  • Gold Stars
  • Metallic Jumbo Candies
  • White Sparkling Sugar
  • Silver Pearls
• Kitchen scissors
• Table knife
• Rolling Pin
• Angled Spatula
• Wax Paper
• Paintbrush
• Water
• Gold Pearls
• Jumbo Snowflakes
• Silver Stars
• Gold Sparkling Sugar
• Assorted Treat Toppings Tackle Box

I love Wilton gingerbread house kits because they include two different designs for inspiration that you can make with everything included in the kit, shown on the front and back of the box. I found the instructions to make the designs pictured on the box online. I never follow them exactly but do use several ideas from the inspiration photos. For example, I copied the roof peak and walkway shown on the front of the box. I always add extra items not found in the kit to my designs. For example, there were silver pearls and gold stars included in the kit, but not gold pearls and silver stars, so I added those.

Before I started, I planned out what I wanted to do for the overall design of my gingerbread house, and then I improvised a little as I went along. I knew I wanted to stick to using only gold, silver and white colors for this house.

First I made the door and windows for the sides of the house from white fondant which was included in the gingerbread house kit. I sandwiched the fondant between two sheets of waxed paper and rolled it out with a rolling pin. I used a table knife to cut out the windows and door. I brushed the windows with water using a paintbrush and then sprinkled gold sparkling sugar onto them. (I learned the damp brush technique from Wilton’s directions.) The gold sugar unexpectedly tinted the windows yellow, but looked fine, giving the windows a yellow glow. I pressed the sugar into the windows to help it stick. I let them dry a few minutes, then attached them to the house with icing.

I used candy to create a window and doorknob for the door. Next I piped windows and 2019 onto the front of the house with icing. This made me nervous and neither are perfect, but the numbers turned out better than I expected. (If I messed them up, I was going to stick candy in the numbers to help define them.)

I finished decorating all the sides of the house by using stars, snowflakes, pearls and the jumbo round candies. I created window panes for the large window with icing. I used a zig zag motion to pipe icing along the corners of the house.

Next I worked on the roof, which took the most icing and the most time. It was really fun to do though. I’d never iced a gingerbread house roof before, and learned that it takes a LOT of icing to cover a roof! I squeezed the icing from the bag onto the roof and then used an angled spatula to spread it in a circular motion. Then I sprinkled the roof with white sparkling sugar and made a MESS! The sugar went sliding down the sides of the roof and onto my table, clothes, and floor. Some of the icing on the roof had already dried so the sugar didn’t stick to it, so I added a few more squeezes of icing and quickly spread and sugared it. I piped a zig zag of icing on the roof’s peak and set the jumbo candies into it, alternating silver and gold. Next I added stars and pearls to the roof, trying to be neat about it, alternating rows of silver and gold of each. To finish the roof, I piped zig zags along all of the edges of the roof. I love how the roof turned out! The gingerbread house smells really good from all the sweet icing covering it.

I used jumbo candies to create a walkway for the front door, and round candies from the treat toppings tackle box to line the sides of the house at the bottom, silver on one side and gold on the other. Then I put the house on a square platter and covered it with all the silver pearls I had left, and filled in the gaps with white and silver sparkling sugar, which look like patches of snow. I added a few gold stars to the tray too.

Happy 2019! I hope your new year starts off on a sweet note!