Decorated Pretzel Cabins

While we were baking the gingerbread houses this year, my son said he wanted to make his gingerbread house out of pretzels.  Not everyone has the time or patience in the kitchen to mix gingerbread dough and the gingerbread kits you buy from the store can be a little boring year-after-year.  These pretzel cabins are a fun alternative to the standard gingerbread house and the more rustic look makes it feel like something you'd come along while snowshoeing through the woods during the holidays.

Welcome to our holiday ranch:  pretzel cabin, pretzel barn and pretzel doghouse.

The decorations:  gumballs, M&Ms, spiced gumdrops, red hots & sprinkles.

This isn't a project that we intend on eating, so I'm not concerned about it being edible.  If you would like to make it edible, you can use melted chocolate or royal icing.  Supplies:  rod pretzels, pretzel sticks, hot glue gun & sticks, serrated knife to cut the pretzels to length. I found it was easier to cut the pretzels to shape/size once they were already glued together.  The pretzels seemed to crumble less this way.

Here are the doghouse pieces:

Finally.  Time to decorate.

The construction using hot glue went much faster than using poured sugar or melted chocolate or royal icing.

One in the mouth...two on the house...one in the mouth...

I stood back, took photos and let them decorate their own:

I can be crazy directive when the kids are helping me decorate cookies or a cake.  Not this project.  This was all about them.

They carefully piped and placed their candy details with the tweezers..."just like Mom".

The snowy cabin:

The barn:

At first, the kids argued over the barn.  They both wanted to decorate the largest structure and I didn't have enough rod pretzels to construct another one.  I offered to make a doghouse with the pretzel sticks- which immediately appeased my daughter.  

She wants to open a pet shop bakery one day.

Gingerbread houses have become our little family tradition over the years, but we all agreed that we liked the pretzel cabins just as much...if not more.

For instruction on these more traditional gingerbread houses, click here.