Gingerbread Houses, Chanukah Houses - The Holidays Must Be Here!

I'm sure you have heard of Gingerbread Houses.

But have you heard of a Chanukah House?

Leave it to Manischewitz, (my favorite kosher food company) for coming up with the creative idea of a Chanukah House Decorating Kit! 

Our local playgroup had a Gingerbread House decorating day set up, so I decided to join in and share some Chanukah Houses with the group.

The kit comes with absolutely everything you need for making the cutest Chanukah House:

• Vanilla Cookie House (4 walls, a roof, chimney and base)
• White Vanilla Frosting - to glue the walls together
• Blue, Yellow and White Fondant
• Blue and White Sprinkles
• Yellow Sanding Sugar
• Multiple shades of blue icing
• Menorah, Star of David and Multi-colored ball Candies

The back of the box has very detailed instructions on how to build the house, and it was quite simple to do! No architecture degree needed here.....whew!

Houses out of the boxes.....let's BUILD!

p.s. can I mention that every single piece was intact up on arrival, it's all packaged so well even thought it came to us by mail!

Okay, we've got the foundation laid, walls up, roof on. 

Piece of cake...or Babka?

The icing dries very quickly, so we didn't have to have the kids sit and wait for hours to decorate!  

Anyone with kids knows that the idea of waiting while surrounded by candy and frosting is not a simple task!

Let's DECORATE!

 

Cookies, Candies and icing - OH VEY!

Some creative roof work by little man "S."

Deep in thought on how to lay the fondant best, no doubt.

Nice icing technique Syd!  Yes the moms had to help some with the building and directing candy towards the houses, not only into the mouths!

Using the fondant was not the easiest task, well not for me anyway. Let me disclose that I am NOT a baker, so I don't work with this sweet stuff often (or ever).  

I found that you have to really roll the fondant out quite thin for it to work best, and you have to make the surface sticky that you're attaching it to (so use icing or a dab of water). To make your time easier, check out these tips for working with fondant.

Once I got the hang of it, I felt quite accomplished! Don't expect to hear that I'm heading to cake decorating school anytime soon though!

Hey, the kids had fun and these houses turned out SO cute. 

I loved that we didn't have to worry about making and baking the gingerbread in the right shapes and sizes, as the Chanukah House was all ready to go!  

The finished product!

We entered our Chanukah House in Manischewitz's Chanukah House Decorating Contest on Facebook!  Wish us luck, as the prizes are $500, $200 or a bunch of Manischewitz products!

You can enter your Chanukah House in the contest too, just enter HERE before Friday, December 14th, at 11:59pm!

*Disclosure: I was not paid for this post.  All opinions are 100% my own and I am under no obligation to write a positive review.  Thank you to the company or PR rep for providing me with a sample for honest evaluation.