Want to make your own?

FIRST: Download and print your Free Off-Grid Gingerbread House Template. Click Here!

SECOND: Scroll down to view the recipe. Or Download the recipe by Clicking Here!

THIRD: Watch the HOW-TO video below:

In this video we show you how to make your own vegan dough and icing from scratch and how we made our gingerbread house light up with clear candy glass!

Step 1: Dough We have found that the following recipes will yield enough to make this model and a little extra to have fun with. 

US Recipe CUPS: We used the recipe (divided in half) and instructions in the link below: 

easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/crossculturaldesserts/r/gingerbread.htm 

1/2 recipe ingredients are:

• 1 cup light corn syrup

• 3/4 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar (depending on how dark you want the bread to be)

• Slightly more than 1/2 cup margarine

• 4 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

UK Recipe METRIC: We used BBCs Mary Barry’s Recipe in the link below: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mary_berrys_gingerbread_91126

Once you made a dough ball, set it somewhere cool to make it easier to roll out later. 

STEP 3: TEMPLATES:  Cut out the paper templates using scissors, and transfer them to cardboard and then cut them out of the cardboard. 

STEP 4: ROLL OUT YOUR DOUGH:  You don’t want to move the pieces once you have cut them out, so roll the dough out on a sheet of baking paper and on a flat metal baking tray. 

Roll the dough out about ¼’’ thick or ½ cm on the paper. 

**TIP** Put the sheet of dough in the fridge or freezer for 5-10 minutes to make it easier to cut in the next step. 

STEP 5: CUT OUT SHAPES

Using the cardboard templates and a knife or pizza cutter, cut out the shapes. Pieces that need to be cut out more than once are labeled “MAKE TWO OF ME!” and “MAKE 3 OF ME!”

STEP 6: CANDY GLASS How to make realistic glass windows using sugar! Click here to watch the HOW-TO video to see exactly how we did it!  

When the dough is unbaked, cut out the windows and bottle bricks. 

For the windows: lightly draw the windows on the “Front Face” using a ruler as a straight edge. Cut out with a butter knife using the ruler as a guide to keep them nice straight and square. Below

For the Bottle Bricks cut holes in the “Side Wall” using a straw, pen or anything that works!

Bake the gingerbread (According to instructions in recipe links above), 

Once the bread is baked, fill the holes with crushed candy which can be made by crushing hard candy with a mortar and pestle or rolling pin

Bake again for 2-3 minutes. WATCH CAREFULLY and take out of the oven once sugar has melted or is bubbling. PRESTO! It’s OK if the sugar bubbles up, it will cool down and smooth out. 

STEP 7 ASSEMBLE:  For this step you will need something to stick the pieces together. You can get pre-made icing or make it yourself. We used Mary Barys recipe to make our icing from scratch: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mary_berrys_gingerbread_91126

***Vegan Tip: We substituted the egg white in the icing recipe with the water from a can of chickpeas. According to goodfood.com, two tablespoons of aquafaba (chickpea water) is about the equivalent of one eggwhite. The recipe called for 3 eggs whites, so we used 6 tablespoons.

Once you have your icing ready, use the images below or watch our ^^^HOW TO VIDEO ^^^ (above) to help you assemble your Gingerbread Earthship! 

**TIP: If you don't attach the roof with icing, you lift it to put a light inside the house that will shine though the candy glass!

STEP 8:  Happy Decorating!  We can’t wait to see what you create! Send in photos of your creations to us!

Here are some submissions from previous years!

See what others have created!

Want to learn more about Earthships?