My husband and I enjoyed making a gingerbread house from scratch each year at Christmas with our children when they were young. After struggling for several years to get the icing to hold the joints, we eventually discovered that a glue gun did a much better job. Since none of us liked gingerbread, it was easier than messing with icing and hoping it held. Fast forward a generation and Grandma no longer wanted the fuss of starting from scratch. And so,  The Village That Santa Forgot was born.

This disaster wasn’t the result we anticipated or expected. But theory and implementation are often entirely different concepts, as the photo proves. I decided that buying a kit with the gingerbread already baked was a more efficient option, so all we had to do was cut on the lines, assemble, and decorate. Sounds simple, right?

Did you know that dry, crunchy gingerbread is virtually impossible to cut, even if scored, without turning into a pile of flavoured rubble? We even tried heating the cookie slabs before cutting, but the result wasn’t much better. And so, we became the unwitting creators and owners of a sub-standard housing development. Have I mentioned that I detest jigsaw puzzles? Making these houses from the resulting mystery-shaped pieces was like assembling a puzzle without rules. You can imagine how delighted Grandma was.

However, when the construction of our village was at last complete, we all had fun decorating it. Sticky up to our eyeballs, using less candy than when we opened the kit, our gingerbread shacks were dressed for success. We had transformed The Village That Santa Forgot into something more hopeful—The Village We Hoped Santa Would Find. But by the time Santa was on the hoof, there was no village left for him to find or forget. So overall, I think it qualified as a success!

If you are brave and want to try making a gingerbread house from scratch (which might be much less frustrating than buying a kit filled with future crumbs), here are a couple of tutorials to check out:

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_a_gingerbread_house/

Gingerbread House Recipe

If this post made you smile, check out another one:

That’s Not What I Meant!