Gingerbread House

Last week, I watched the Christmas Bake off, and saw Mary and Paul make this gingerbread house. Although the recipe is not in the book, it was in last weeks Radio Times and I felt that it just had to be attempted. The kids were also very keen, so how could I refuse, having made so many other things?
I made the gingerbread on Friday night - with the help of Tom, who provided moral support! It was a huge amount of gingerbread, and very difficult to knead, but eventually I managed to roll it out and cut it into the correct shapes (thanks to the template download).
The windows were made by crushing boiled sweets. Unfortunately I do not own a pestle and mortar, so Ad used my rolling pin to crush them. Sadly my rolling pin (which is wooden) is no longer smooth, but has some large dents in! I ended up borrowing a neighbour's rolling pin, which did the job beautifully! Let's hope Santa brings me a new one for Christmas!!!
We put the whole thing together on Saturday, listening to Michael Buble and generally feeling very festive. Ellie and Ben did a brilliant job of cementing the chocolate buttons onto the roof with royal icing.
We were all really pleased with the finished house, and thoroughly enjoyed making it. It lasted a couple of days, and was admired by several visitors before we gave in, and tucked into it. It was delicious!! We decided that it scored 10!!!!!! Finally a recipe that was a lot of effort, but worth every bit of it. Just a shame its not acutally in the Baking Bible!