What I Ate: Gingerbread Houses

There's nothing more Christmas appropriate than gingerbread, at least in terms of dessert. The warm fragrant spices always remind me of the holidays and they go great with any hot drink, whether you're into tea, coffee, or even hot toddies.

This year, instead of regular gingerbread cookies, we decided to make gingerbread houses. I wanted to make a slightly larger house to use as a centerpiece for our Christmas party this weekend. And then, my sister and I decided to make mini houses so that we could enjoy the shape but also comfortably snack on them.

We spent a few hours making the dough, breaking for dinner, cutting out the shapes, baking the cookies, and then decorating. It was a fun and relaxing evening activity that yielded an adorable little Christmas village.

Of course, we had to get good and cozy with a cup of hot cocoa. Hot chocolate is great too. Nutella hot chocolate is even better.

To glue the cookies together, I made a simple royal icing with egg white, vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, maple syrup, and lots of icing sugar.

I set up a little winter wonderland using the adorable little gingerbread homes.

And, of course, I'm obsessed with how cute these gingerbread creations are, so I'm going overboard with photos.

The pine tree was made with a sugar cone.

And, I grabbed some battery-powered LED lights and shoved them inside the house for some extra mystique. So cute, right?

Happy Christmas! (... to those of you who celebrate and happy holidays to everyone else!)

A video posted by ra¢h 💋 (@racheerachh) on Dec 19, 2015 at 8:21pm PST

xoxo.