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DIY Graham Cracker Haunted Houses

Graham Cracker Houses are a fun and inexpensive way to build haunted houses or gingerbread style houses with your family. This craft allows for more creativity in structure and decoration than you find with the pre-built kits that you purchase from the stores.

Use this food craft as a fun event for a kids Halloween or Christmas party. Simply set out the supplies and let the kids build and decorate, they will enjoy the free form style and it provides a tasty treat for them to enjoy as well.

We include a recipe for a strong royal icing that will be durable and set fully in a short amount of time, and you can color the icing however you desire to fit the event or theme of the houses. Ideas for candy, cookies and all varieties of edible decorations are included to give you lot’s of ideas.

Graham Cracker Haunted House
Our Latest Graham Cracker House design

How do you make a Graham Cracker House?

Making gingerbread style houses using Graham Crackers, Mini Wheat cereals, and Chex Mix cereals is a fun and easy way to have fun with kids all throughout the year, and for any theme you desire. You can even get creative and build castles for a fantasy themed birthday party.

The Graham Crackers provide the perfect planks for walls, and the cereals can be used for rooftops, windows, fences and more. You will build your main structure using Graham Crackers and royal icing, then embellish using candies, marshmallows, cookie crumbles and any other edible goody you desire.

Graham Cracker House With Royal Icing. Recipe For Royal Icing Included
Graham cracker house with royal icing
Diy Graham Cracker Haunted House. Kids Love This Project. Royal Icing Recipe Included.
Aliyah’s DIY Graham Cracker Haunted House

What icing do I use to decorate Graham Cracker houses?

There are two types of icing that you can use to assemble and decorate your Graham Cracker houses, the most popular and strongest would be a traditional royal icing. A strong royal icing will set very hard and may not be pleasant to eat. This icing is made by mixing powdered sugar, eggs whites and water together, it creates a very firm consistency once dry.

If you want to be able to eat your houses after they are built, you can use a different form of royal icing. It will still give you a good hold, but will result in a more delicate creation. To make an edible royal icing combine powdered sugar with water and meringue powder. Meringue powder is dried pasteurized egg whites making it safer to eat and a bit easier to work with.

Lainy's Pumkin Patch. Kids Love This Project!
Lainy making her pumpkin patch

Can I use store bought icing on my Graham Cracker house?

Using a store bought frosting or buttercream to decorate your gingerbread style houses is a personal choice. These frostings will be delicious to eat, but they are soft and won’t create the firm bond needed to keep your house standing.

If you want a house that will create a showpiece and allow for more elaborate decoration, royal icing is your best choice. If you simply want to provide a fun, tasty frosting that kids can play with and enjoy eating, you can absolutely opt for a store bought frosting or buttercream.

Lainy's Diy Graham Cracker Haunted House. Kids Love This Project.
Lainy’s haunted house was so scary she couldn’t look at it 🙂

What is needed to create a Graham Cracker Gingerbread Style House?

To make your own Graham Cracker houses the supply list can be as elaborate or simplistic as you want, and fortunately, everything can be found at your grocery stores or whipped up quickly in your kitchen.

  • Boxes of Graham Crackers, however many you need depending on your creation size.
  • Mini Wheat cereals or Chex Mix cereals if desired for rooftops, fences etc…
  • A strong royal icing, we recommend making your own.
  • Icing bags or sandwich bags with a corner cut out. You will use these to apply the icing.
  • Paper plates or a cardboard cutout to secure each house.
  • Disposable table cloth to help contain the mess.
  • Assorted candies depending on the theme of your houses. M&Ms, gummies, skittles, eyeballs, marshmallows, candy ropes, peppermints etc…
  • Plastic utensils to help with decorating.
  • Edible writing gel for embellishments.
  • Edible glitter or luster dust if desired.
House Decoration
Aliyah carefully decorated her house

Fortunately, whenever you are building a Graham Cracker house to fit the theme of a Holiday you will find no shortage of fun, themed candies to use on your houses.

Diy Grahamcrackerhaunted Houses. Kids Love This Project. Royal Icing Recipe Included.
DIY Graham Cracker Haunted Houses

Can you hot glue Graham Cracker Houses?

You certainly can use hot glue to build and secure your Graham Cracker houses, but keep in mind they will not be edible at that point, so be mindful of the age group you are working with. If you are looking to provide a fun, creative activity for a large group of kids, you can preassemble the houses and simply let the kids decorate their houses.

We would not recommend the use of hot glue with a large group of kids who are building their own houses, or who would want to be able to eat their houses once they are built. So be sure there is always adult supervision present if you choose to use hot glue for the main structure.

Graham Cracker Haunted House
Oreo Mint Cookies make great mossy dirt for the flat roof and yard.

Tips For DIY Graham Cracker Haunted Houses

The Base

Use a sturdy tray, strong paper plate, or cardboard cutout to build the houses on. This provides a mobile base that will secure the houses and allow them to be moved around if and when needed.

The Royal Icing

Load the royal icing into a decorators piping bag with a circle tip and use that for gluing the pieces together. You can also use a plastic Ziploc bag with a small corner cut out of it.

The icing might make thick seams depending on the size of the circle tip used or the cutout in the bag corner. If you need to wipe off excess icing, use a plastic utensil such as a knife or spoon.

Constructing the House

You’ll need about one sleeve of graham crackers per house for these little houses. More for larger constructions like the one we did in our video, use 2 to 3 sleeves.

Use a knife to cut the house gable ends to fit the Gable roof end angle. The thing is, different brands of grahams are shaped differently, we used Honey Maid brand crackers. Simply choose which brand and variety of Graham Cracker based on your creation plan.

Chocolate grahams are fun for a haunted house if you can find them, cinnamon Graham Crackers would add a delicious element alongside royal icing and you may even be able to find limited edition flavors around certain holidays.

Graham Cracker Haunted House
Top down view of the haunted house yard we did. Pumpkin patch and graveyard with ghosts and monsters.

The Haunted House Yard

  • We made a pumpkin patch with candy on one side of the house, with a cemetery on the other.
  • For the decorating glue we just used canned frosting and added color to it. You can use the royal icing for this but it will begin to harden after about 30 minutes, so you do need to work quickly.
  • The house will need some set up time after construction. Allow for 10 to 20 minutes before decorating will ensure the house joints are strong enough to withstand decorating.
Graham Cracker Haunted House
Large orange marshmallows with candy eyes are fun monsters. The graveyard headstones are from halloween sprinkles.

Suggested Haunted House candy decorations

  • Candy corn
  • Large Marshmallows with edible eyeballs for monsters
  • Edible writing gel
  • Pumpkins
  • Twizzlers for accents and fencing
  • Skittles
  • M&M
  • Mike N Ikes
  • Scary eyeballs
  • Monster candies
  • Witches hats
  • Reeses Ghosts
  • Fall colored candy sprinkles
  • Cookies to crumble for dirt if desired
  • Small plastic decorations such as spiders if desired for aesthetics only

Look for what your local stores have. We have linked some items to Amazon is you need items and cannot find them locally.

Graham Cracker Haunted House
Yield: 1 Graham cracker house

DIY Haunted Graham Cracker House

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Additional Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

An easy homemade icing glue for this DIY Haunted Graham Cracker Project and any gingerbread house you may want to tackle. 

Ingredients

Royal Icing Ingredients

  • 3 Large egg whites
  • 4 3/4 Cups Powdered sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. Cream of Tartar

Graham Cracker House

Instructions

Royal Icing:

This icing is perfect for glueing the house pieces together. It sets VERY strong so use it as soon as you make it.

  1. In a large bowl, beat egg whites and cream of tartar with electric mixer at medium speed. Mixing Icing For Graham Cracker Haunted House
  2. Add powdered sugar in small amounts, mixing well on high speed after each addition.
  3. Beat on high speed 4-5 minutes until mixture thickens. Icing For Assembling Graham Cracker Haunted House
  4. Put the icing into a piping bag with a circle tip. Foundation For Graham Cracker Haunted House
  5. Use as needed to cement the foundation and all seams of your house. (watch video)

The Haunted House:

We created a video, Linked below, to walk you through how we made our latest haunted house.

Here are some Tips:

  1. place your house on a strong foundation surface. We used a ceramic tray with a silicone mat.
  2. Use support for the roof (shown on video) or it may collapse.
  3. Ideas for house yard include graveyard, pumpkin patch and scary monsters, ghosts (and other ghouly creatures)

Feel free to create your own personal house design and let your kids help with all the decorations.

Nutrition Information

Yield

10

Serving Size

1

Amount Per Serving Calories 293Total Fat 3gSaturated Fat 1gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 1gCholesterol 0mgSodium 80mgCarbohydrates 67gFiber 1gSugar 60gProtein 2g

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DIY Graham Cracker Haunted Houses are a fun fall craft the whole family can enjoy. Try this endlessly creative craft. You can also use this template to make your own Holiday house!

Frosting Recipe Source: geniuskitchen.com

sarah

Saturday 2nd of December 2017

that is super cute and This is so creative,

Let's Get Real #114 - 365ish Days of Pinterest

Thursday 29th of October 2015

[…] DIY Graham Cracker Haunted Houses by Homemade Food Junkie! […]

Chelsea @ The Johnsons Plus Dog

Tuesday 20th of October 2015

What a cute spin on a Christmas craft. I've never seen a "gingerbread" house done for anything but Christmas. This is so creative. Thanks for sharing at the #HomeMattersParty - hope to see you again this weekend.

homemadefoodjunkie

Tuesday 20th of October 2015

Thank you Chelsea. The kids loved this craft!

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