The Gingerbread House Tradition - Frog Prince Paperie

There is nothing quite like walking through the doors of a house in December and catching a nose full of fresh baked gingerbread. It’s all cinnamony and sweet with that aromatic twinge of ginger. It’s one of the things I love most about baking and making gingerbread houses. (Makes me really happy I can have that smell with The Thymes Gingerbread collection!) The smell is undoubtedly all the happy things about Christmas for me. Funny how scents are so linked to memories, isn’t it?

Fortunately enough, one of my kids’ very favorite holiday traditions is baking gingerbread houses. Not hard to see why–it’s pure sugar-coated artistic creativity. Did I mention the sugar? The time we spend together making them is always wonderful, and I’m glad we’re able to build such great memories making gingerbread houses together.

I’ve posted up several times about how much I adore the recipe we use from Nikki of Tikkido, so I’m just going to direct you to this very thorough gingerbread recipe and tutorial to get that part done. What I am going to offer you in this post are a few tips to do a twist on your houses.

We’re pretty used to making giant gingerbread houses, but this year I baked gingerbread houses in miniature. All you have to do is scale down the size of your gingerbread template when you cut out your pieces.

We usually use cake circles to put our gingerbread houses on and decorate, but here some 3 inch paper coasters worked just fine! The tiny houses don’t end up being very heavy and don’t need double corrugated support.

Once we were done decorating all the houses this go-around we had a wonderful little village. The kids might have liked this approach to our tradition even more because they got to decorate more than one house, and therefore fully express all that Christmas creativity we make them keep bottled up. Tiny houses are a great idea if you’re supplying a classroom’s worth of houses as well.

Back to the wonderful smells of baking gingerbread! Just about every person walking in our front door this week got a dreamy-eyed look on their face and said “smells wonderful” as they came in. I was a busy baker this week. I thought I might miss that fresh-baked smell a little when it was gone until I opened up my care package from The Thymes.

So. Much. Gingerbread. Yes! Their fragrances smell just like you’re cooking something good in your oven. And there are options! Candles made with food grade paraffin wax, sachets (great for adding as decoration for your gifts), reed diffusers–even handsoap and lotion.

The Thymes fragrance sets are wonderful gifts for friends, teachers and neighbors this Christmas. Right now, you can get a free Thymes Sample Set (14 unique fragrances) with any $25 purchase or more, so all the more reason to try them out. The beautiful packaging and care in the product creation will make the recipient feel special.