They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say, it takes a child to build a village. Luckily my daughter was visiting this week to help me create this gingerbread village.

We had a lot of fun putting this together. We started with a big batch of my favourite thick and chewy gingerbread dough, from Cook’s Illustrated. I cut some of the dough into houses using these cookie cutters. Instead of piping the doors and windows, I discovered these stencils. You do not require any special skills to use them. They are so simple and the results are quite dramatic.

A few tips for stenciling success:

• Practice a few times on parchment paper, so you don’t waste cookies.
• Your royal icing should be the consistency of toothpaste.
• A small offset spatula makes the job a bit easier than a regular knife. Put the icing on the bottom-side of the spatula.
• Use one hand to hold the stencil in place and the other hand to gently spread icing. I found it easiest to start in centre and work my way to one end, then switch and do the other half.
• Scrape off excess icing, but don’t scrape it clean. Just a thin coat is enough.
• Try not to let stencil lift while applying icing. If you mess it up, remember that mistakes still taste good.
• Wash stencil between cookies. Just place wet stencil on towel and pat dry. Be gentle with stencil.

For the snowflakes, I used these cookie cutters. I wanted an assortment of sizes and shapes, as no two snowflakes are alike in nature! If you want to hang your snowflakes, be sure to put a hole in them before baking. I used the small end of a size 3 piping tip. We piped simple decorations on these cookies and sprinkled on coarse sanding sugar while they were still wet.

We filled a wooden box with” snow” (coarse sanding sugar) and used spice jars to support the houses. I trimmed some of them to have varying heights.

To hang the snowflakes I built two towers from my oxo good grips containers. Then I duct taped three wooden dowels across the top of the containers. We threaded the snowflake cookies with fishing wire and hung them.
The tricky part was getting the snowflakes to all face front with their pretty icing side. My daughter turned them the right way and I was behing the camera ready to hit the shutter as soon as she moved her hands. We were almost successful. I photoshopped out the fishing wire in editing.

We decided to try making it snow. It made a huge mess but we got the shot!

Click here to print recipe for Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Royal Icing.