When you bake your own gingerbread houses, you can add notches to the side so that they fit together in an interlocking pattern.
This is helpful to keep the houses from falling apart as the icing dries, and it’s especially useful in humid climates.
I adapted a couple of basic patterns that I’ve used before to include the notches so that the sides interlock, and the templates for them are below.
You can download the files and cut them out to use for your own gingerbread house baking projects.
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Template for a gingerbread house with sloping sides and interlocking pieces.
This template has sloping sides and the pieces all have notches in them so that you can fit them together to help support them when the icing is drying.
This is the pattern cut out of cardboard and assembled:
You can use this recipe to make the house pieces (it tastes good.)
This is a little modified A-frame house, but I also put together a version of the basic pattern that I wrote about here: Small gingerbread house with pattern
Here’s that file for you:
Tips to assemble gingerbread houses with notches in the sides.
The main thing to remember when you’re baking these pieces is to make sure that the notches are cut out very precisely. Chances are you’ll have to trim them when they come out of the oven to make sure that the cutout sections are large enough to fit the notched sections, but if you do that when the gingerbread is fresh out of the oven, the pieces will fit together well.
Add the royal icing or other glue that you’re using to the straight edges of the sides and the roof, then attach them together using the notches to line them up.
You might want to try to put the pieces together before adding the icing, just to make sure they fit together well.
