I saw that the developer of Nancy Drew was hosting their Cookie Contest for 2024 and I was determined to make an entry for this year. It took me a while to finally decide on entering the 3D Building/Gingerbread house category. I had recently played Trail of the Twister and thought it was perfect since the home base house is a large part of the game.
In designing the actual structure for the gingerbread house I combined math with patterning pieces out of cardboard to create the base structure. I taped those pieces together to double check the fit of roof pieces and then free-handed the shapes needed for the room protruding from the roof. The final dimensions of the house came out to 8.5 inches wide, 12 inches long, and 8.25 inches tall at the peak.
When making the gingerbread I found structural gingerbread recipes since it needs to be strong enough to support the weight of the roof. I initially tried cutting the pieces with the cardboard patterns on a separate sheet then moving them to the sheet pans for baking but ended up warping the dough in the process. So, I rolled out the dough on parchment, transferred it to the baking sheet, cut the shapes on the baking sheet, and removed the excess from around the pieces. I didn’t follow a set baking time for them but they took around 40-50 minutes for the larger pieces. In total I had 13 pieces to form the entirety of the building.
When going to assemble the pieces I knew I wanted to use something stronger than the typical royal icing used on smaller gingerbread houses. I made a caramel similar to what would be used for a croquembouche and dipped the sides of the pieces I was going to join in the caramel before quickly assembling it. If you do use this method be very careful as the caramel is extremely hot and can burn your skin. For difficult to dip pieces like the roof, I spread caramel on the bottom of the roof sections where it would attach to the walls and held it in place until the caramel solidified. I repeated this for all sections of the building until I had the structure complete.
For adding details, in the gingerbread sections that had windows I cut rectangular sections where I wanted those windows to be. When the pieces were almost done baking I added crushed up butterscotch hard candy making sure that there was enough to melt and fill the window space and left them in the oven until the candy was completely melted. I baked them on parchment paper and had no issues with removing them after the piece was cooled completely.
For the siding panels, I separated the layers of vanilla wafer cookies by applying pressure to each individual layer (I did end up breaking quite a few but used them for the smaller details) until they separated from the one below and scraped off the filling on most of the wafer. I cut the triangular sections using the cardboard pattern and firmly pressing the knife down onto the wafer to create clean cuts. I also tried using a serrated knife and using a sawing motion which did work but on smaller details was a bit more difficult to get right. I attached the siding panels onto the structure using a very thick royal icing. I repeated for sides that had visible siding panels in the game. The cellar door was made by cutting diagonals into a wafer cookie, attaching to another wafer cookie for support, then laying more wafer cookies on top using the royal icing to hold it together and topping it with a chocolate door.
For the shingles, I saw a video of a technique that used melted chocolate and thought that was the perfect solution. I melted some milk chocolate candy melts, spread it very thin on a piece of parchment and, before the chocolate fully cooled, made horizontal and vertical cuts to the desired size. I placed the shingles in the fridge until they fully hardened and then used the parchment to break it along the lines. I attached them using the same royal icing as the shingles. I dusted the shingles and siding with powdered sugar and cocoa powder to mimic the weathering on the house in the game.
I spread some of the white royal icing on the board I had and added sprinkles to mimic the ground. I dyed the rest of the royal icing green and used a grass tip to pipe the grass around the house (I didn’t add more water so it was incredibly stiff and difficult to pipe so learn from my mistake). I added a light inside the house which is difficult to see in the picture but really brought the gingerbread house to life.