Stone Gingerbread House

I almost didn't do a gingerbread house this year.  I baked two for kids to decorate later this week with cousins, but then I ended up with a sick one at home in a clean house.  The presents are wrapped under the tree.  All of my baking is finished.  We've been baking this 2 story chateau for several years.  Come along to see how it was decorated in stone this time...

Here's the recipe (below).  The cast iron mold I use is the John Wright 8.5" double-sided Chateau Mold.  

After the gingerbread cools and hardens, it ready to decorate.  Mix the royal icing and keep a wet towel over the top of the mixing bowl so the icing doesn't harden.  I started by piping icing for a tree inside the house that you can see from the front window.  Sprinkle with green sanding sugar and then tip gingerbread to remove excess sugar.

Continue with the windows.  Pipe and add yellow sanding sugar to look like the lights are on inside the chateau.

Now the stone.  

 Pipe the stone with royal icing and let it set:

Now it's time for watercolor.  Take a small dab of food coloring and a brush in water and paint the royal icing to look like stone.

 The right half is finished.  The left side shows a grey tone theme- which I liked as well.  You can always use this stone technique to dress up a store-bought gingerbread house kit.

Pipe the windows, balconies and door accents.  I could have left these white, but I wanted a more rustic iron/dark wood feel to the house.

 The roof is piped and sprinkled with white sanding sugar.  Candy pearls were placed in the center of  each shake.

Here is the full house ready for assembly.  The tops of the windows and balcony were brushed over with silver food spray.  Window frames are trimmed in brown and there is a family painted in the left window.

I find it most helpful to get a few heavy boxed items to use as wall stabilizers.  After placing the boxes to line up the walls, I added a heavy strip of royal icing under the walls.

 The walls fully set within 20-30 minutes.

The only thing left to add were trees. The trees are waffle cones frosted with royal icing as a base and then the branches are piped with a star tip.

Voila!

This is my favorite one so far.

Snow tipped trees with lights:

 Left side of the chateau.  Tip:  the roof didn't line up perfectly, so there was royal icing between the wall and roof.   I waited until it hardened and then painted over with a little brown food coloring (gel) and water.

 My gingerbread house sold last year at a charity auction.  This new chateau will stay at my house.