Except that Jack didn't build it. Jolais, Noah and I, however, had lots of fun constructing and decorating houses with the gingerbread we'd made.
The first step towards construction is making the icing glue. It's a very simple combination of icing (confectioner's) sugar, egg white and cream of tartar. We used half a pound of icing sugar, 1-2 egg whites, and 1/2 tsp cream of tartar, beaten together till thick and smooth.
It helps to have two people for constructing the house. Jolais and I worked together, one of us applying the icing glue and the other holding the wall and roof pieces steady. Once all the gingerbread pieces are glued, you need to leave the house for a couple of hours so the glue can dry and set.
Okay, now comes the fun part: going crazy with candies. You can only use the perfect candies to decorate, of course, so all the broken bits or misshapen ones have to be eaten. Oh and it's also a rule that you can only decorate in even numbers. So if you have an odd number of some types of candy, you must eat one in order to make it even. And if the icing glue accidentally gets on top of a candy, it obviously spoils the effect so those should be disposed of similarly. Ideally, you should have bought double the amount of candy you will actually end up using on your gingerbread house, to allow for accidents and odd numbers and unforeseen circumstances ...
You'll need plenty of icing glue, enough to daub the underside of all the candies, draw the outlines of windows and doors (use a forcing bag for this), and liberally reseal any roof or wall seals. Then just go wild with decorating, and enjoy the end results!
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