Most gingerbread houses are made by balancing a roof and four cookie walls with your fingertips, then attaching them with Royal Icing, a frosting that acts like cement when it hardens.
To avoid this balancing act, I built a cardboard inner house out of a shoe box and attached the cookies to it. (Yes, you can still nibble on the house--just peel off the cookies and candies from the shoe box.)
MATERIALS
Shoe box
Lightweight cardboard
Graph paper
Scissors
Tape
Pen
The shoe box, turned upside down, will be the base of the house. But first, trace around one of the longer sides of the box onto a piece of graph paper and carefully cut along the lines to make the pattern for the roof.
Next, trace the graph-paper pattern three times onto a piece of lightweight cardboard and cut the pieces out. Tape the long side of one cardboard cutout along the top of the overturned box; repeat with the other on the opposite side of the box. (Save the last piece to use as a template for cutting out the gingerbread dough.)
Finally, tape the top edges of the cutouts together to form the triangular roof.
TESTER'S TIP
Make sure the shoe box isn't too large. I tried a box from a pair of men's soccer cleats and the proportion of the roof pitch to the house was way off. A box from children's or women's footwear is ideal. For a lightweight cardboard roof, I used an empty pizza box--but the back of a notepad works, too.
