Hi guys! Christmas is just around the corner! Today we have a guest post from Ella Sugar Boutique! Look at this utterly charming holiday gingerbread cottage. The best part? You can use a purchased kit and crank it up a big ole notch by using Ella’s decorating tutorial. My heart pitter patters……

Materials

• any pre-made , pre-assembled ginger bread house or the one you baked.  This year you can find great variety of houses in Costco, Target, Wilton.com
• Fondant
• Icing colors (blue, pink, red, yellow, green, brown)
• sharp knife or x-acto
• Stiff but still sticky royal icing
• pipin gel
• ruler
• small round cutters
• fine tip decorators brush
• flat tip decorators brush
• rule
• pizza/fondant cutter
• yellow sour drops
• 9 inch roller pin
• small silicone molds (buttons, leafs, bows )
• royal icing dots (multiple sizes)
• Red Sugar Pearls
• Scale cutter
• christmas lights (optional)
• Fine tip edible paint markers.

Instructions

• If you bought a preassembled house cut out the frontal, and side windows. If you are making your own , before you bake it cut out all the windows.  You can cut them all out or just some of them.

• Make some patterns in paper with the same measurements of your house
• Using the circle cutters and brown fondant, cut out one ring to decorate your round widows if you have them.

Roll out white fondant and cut out the 2 pentagons or squares to cover the front and back of the house. Place the pieces on separated powder sugar-cornstarch dusted paper

Tint fondant in soft blue, roll it out 1/16 ” thick and cut out diamonds, then attach them to the front and back pieces

• Use the house patterns to cut out the spaces for the windows .

• Apply piping gel to the house front and back, and attach the fondant pieces.

• *If you didn’t cut out all the windows: Roll out the yellow sour drops very thin, and attach them to the window spaces.

• Cover the sides with white fondant and cut out the windows spaces,  procede to cover them with yellow sour drops if needed.

• Roll out blue fondant as wide as your house sides and 1/16? thick. Cut strips 1/2 in tall.

• Attach the strips to the house, starting from the bottom and trimming the excess.

• Attach the house to a base using stiff royal icing. In my case I cut a hole in the cardboard base because I’m going to place a little light inside the house.
• The house would look close to this at this point.

• If your house has additional pieces like  a door or porch, continue the process decorating those.
• Cut out the shape of the door and trimmings in red fondant

• Attach those pieces to the house.

• Decorate the round windows

• If you opened the  front and side windows, add fondant to the lower part of the frame or to the 4 sides if you like.

• Attach the chimney to the roof if you have one and cover it with soft blue fondant.
• Roll out white fondant and cut out scales. Attach them to the roof starting from the bottom edge cover it completely.

• Use multiple small molds and make small figures to decorate de roof.

• Finish the roof edges with 1/2 scales.

• Decorate the door adding a little roof in fondant.

• Cut out white fondant strips to cover the exposed ginger bread on the sides .

• Add trimmings to the windows and poke little holes on the corners to simulate nails.

• Finish your roof attaching the little fondant shapes and royal icing dots. Finish yor chimney if you attached one.

• Cut out red fondant strips, cut the edges and attach them to the windows lower trim as ribbons

• Mold or cut out little leaves in green fondant and attach the leafs and red sugar peals to the window ribbons, roof,  roof edges, and chimney. Add leaf to the edges of the roof in the front door too.

• Add the final details like a bow in the top of the roof.

• Insert the light (optional)
• And add a bow to the door roof, use edible markers and pains the details in the windows and door.

• Cover with stiff royal icing  and a spatula the house base and use sour drops to shape a little walkway.

• Add decors to the landscape and a ribbon to cover the base’s edge.

And your done!

Ella Buitrago MS is an Engineer, Cake Decorator and Sugarpreneur owner of the Ella Sugar Boutique. She is a software engineer from Colombia, has a Master in Information Technology form Harvard University. Her love for the sugar arts started when she was a teenager; she took culinary clases in high school, she self-taught the fondant preparation, royal icing piping and more, until she came to UU.EE and took independent clases in the arts.  From 2010 to 2012 she worked as a freelance cake decorator at the Decorating Room for Wilton Inc before moving to the Boston area. Read more here…

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How seriously cute is this little house. All the similar gingerbread houses we make over the years; this is such a fun and new approach. I’d love to see yours!

Happy Holidays!
Sharon