Happy Thanksgiving! We’ve been counting down to the start of the holiday season, anxiously waiting to share this irresistible gingerbread birdhouse tutorial with you! Hani Bacova (Hanielas), contributor to Cake Central Magazine and author of the popular baking blog Haniela’s, brings us this adorable winter centerpiece, decked with boughs of holly! Enjoy!

Materials

1 birdhouse cookie cutter set or template (a simple bird house consists of: 4 side pieces, 2 roof pieces and 1 base. 1 small cutter is needed to make a small opening on the front wall.)
Additional cutters for decorations (small leaf cutters for holly, a bird cutter, etc. Let your creativity bloom.)
1 batch strong gingerbread cookie dough
Small batch royal icing, white or light ivory
Food gel colorings, desired colors
Piping bags
Piping tips
Couplers

Tips on choosing a template:

I picked a free template online and resized the whole image to my liking. Then I made simple plastic cookie templates that I used to hand-cut my cookies. I made them about 2.3″ x 2.6″.

The template I used can be found here: Torrie Jayne

Instructions

Flood all the cookies with white or light ivory royal icing. Let dry.

Using forest green and leaf green, color your icing.

If desired, use mini leaf cutter to make holly leaves.

Pipe pine branches randomly onto the front, back and sides. Let dry.

Using brown icing, pipe dots and short lines to create pine cone shapes. Let dry.

To decorate the roof, use white icing to pipe the classic roof shingles pattern. While icing is still wet, sprinkle coarse sugar on top.

Let all the cookie part dry before assembling the house. Cookies above are for 2 separate birdhouses, just to give you some more decorating ideas.

Use stiff royal icing to glue the pieces together. I usually start with the front and sides, adding the back of the house last. Then I tend to wait until the icing dries to add the roof pieces.