When I moved into my house, it reminded me of a brick wedding cake or confection found on the banquet tables in Elizabethan times. I wanted to re-create it in sugar. I found the original blueprints of the house from 1902, and the fate was sealed. I scaled down the drawings and traced it onto parchment, which acted as a stencil for cutting out the dough. I went with sugar cookie dough, instead of the classic gingerbread, because my house is golden yellow, and the sugar cookie was a better match.
My house has all kinds of fussy details that I re-created with cut-out cookies and piped royal icing. You can also make a simple little house from cookie cutters designed for that purpose, and use pretzels to make an old-world-looking roof. There really are no rules for how these cookie houses look! Baking a bunch of the house pieces and letting your guests build their own version is a terrific holiday party activity for youngsters and grandparents alike.
I am lucky to have the original blueprints, which made it easier to trace the outline of the house and make it an even more realistic representation.
Each year I decorate my holiday sugar cookie house with royal Icing made with lemon juice, which is tasty, quite stunning, and strong enough to hold up as the glue for the house. I’ll admit that I love the fussy work of intricate decorations on sugar cookies. It is the closest I will come to ever using my BFA from college. If you don’t share my enthusiasm for precision piping, stick with cutout cookies, then sprinkle them with colored sugar like my boys did and they are delicious and festive!
You can watch me create the cookie house in my Emmy-nominated Holiday Party with Andrew and Zoë special on the Magnolia Network, which can be streamed on HBO MAX. And it has been featured in Architectural Digest, which you can see here.
Ingredients
Royal Icing
- 4 cups / 480g confectioners’ sugar plus more to thicken
- 1/4 cup / 30g meringue powder
- 1/4 cup / 60g cold water or fresh lemon juice plus more to thin
- 1/2 tsp lemon extract or any other flavor
- Food coloring optional
Instructions
- Make the sugar cookie dough and chill as directed. Trace the shape of the house onto parchment paper and cut out all the pieces for your template.
- Roll the cookie dough to a rectangle about 1/8 to 1/4 inch / 3 to 6mm thick. The larger the house, the thicker the cookie dough walls should be to create more stability.
- Use the parchment templates of the house to cut out the pieces of dough. Once you have all the sections cut out, carefully transfer them to parchment paper–lined baking sheets. It will require a few sheets and you want
- to keep cookies of similar sizes on one sheet so they bake evenly.
- Use a paring knife or cookie cutter to cut out the windows and doors. Fill windows with hard candy to create glass. Bake the cookies as directed. Once baked, allow to cool completely.
- Use royal icing to decorate the details. I created swirls and flourishes with mini round (Ateco #3 and #4) and star (Ateco #13 and #16) tips. I find this much easier to do while the pieces of the house are lying flat, as opposed to after you have glued them all together and they are upright.
- Glue the sides together using thick royal icing. Once you’ve glued the walls together, allow it to set for several hours so it’s strong enough to hold up the roof. I often put heavy cans around the perimeter to hold the pieces in place as they dry.
- Use the royal icing to add more flourishes and details around your house. I use a tiny round tip (Wilton #3) to pipe out the filigree from the porch roof railing onto parchment paper. I add flourishes with the star tip (Ateco #13). Let the icing dry completely on the paper and very carefully use a small offset metal spatula to lift the icing off the paper and then use more royal icing to glue it in place.
- Once the walls of your house are solid, glue the roof panels on. Decorate with your desired details and cake decorating pearls.
- If you have gaps where the pieces come together, simply decorate with royal icing icicles!
- Light up the sugar cookie house by lighting a tea light candle and setting it on a plate, then place the house on top. Dust with confectioners’ sugar.
