Gingerbread House - made of soap!

So, as I was browsing through the dollar store the other day, checking out all of the Christmas goodies, I spotted this silicone mold:

Of course, when I see any silicone mold, my mind immediately goes to soap and this was no exception. I remember seeing an adorable gingerbread soap house that Kinpira (Soaphistication) made last year, and thinking that this was something that I would really like to try.

As I was going through the register with my mold, the cashier told me that she had bought this same mold and it had worked really well for her gingerbread cookies. I always like to see people’s expressions when I tell them that what I am buying will be used for/in soap. Sometimes people are keen and interested, other times they don’t skip a beat and keep right on talking, and I remember on at least one occasion distinctly getting an expression of semi-horror, like I was mistreating the poor little toys for putting them in soap. This particular cashier however didn’t skip a beat and went back to discussing cookies ;)

I toyed with the idea of using melt and pour for the house pieces, but in the end I thought I would like to try making them out of cold process. I knew I needed a CP recipe that would set up fast and hard, so I chose to use a 100% coconut oil recipe for the house pieces. Even though I used a gingerbread fragrance that will surely turn the house pieces brown, I did use some cocoa powder to achieve the gingerbread color for the pieces.

Here are the pieces poured into the mold:

And out:

I lost the little gingerbread men, as I was too impatient and ruined them trying to get them out. Luckily I had these guys on standby:

I made gumdrop candies for the house with melt and pour colored with mica and dusted with glitter to give them a sugared look:

I stalled a bit when I got to the frosting. Should I use regular cold process or whipped soap? I went back and forth as to which might work better, and in the end I settled on whipped soap, hoping that the thicker consistency would give a stronger and quicker bond.

Next, I carefully set about putting together the gingerbread house. I put the whipped soap into 2 frosting bags, one with a large round tip and one with a smaller round tip for detailing.

I used the large round tip to put a good amount of whipped soap on the bottoms and sides of the house pieces to hold it all together. I used cans to prop up all the pieces, including the roof. I only had one cave-in, which was kind of expected and I was thankful I only had one!

I used the large tip to put the snow on the roof, and I nestled some gum drops on top and sprinkled it with some glittery stars:

I used the smaller tip to do some of the detail work; around the windows, doors and around the bottom of the gingerbread men:

I let it sit a full 24 hours before I even attempted to remove the cans....carefully….I held my breath and stepped back:

Success! The whipped soap really did a great job holding the house all together, it was easy to decorate with but set up very firm. When my husband came home last night, I asked him to guess what it was made from. He looked it over and studied it carefully and said 'gingerbread?', 'chocolate?', 'fondant?'. He was so confused because it looks and smells just like real gingerbread...lol! 

Here is a little Vine video of the house:

PS - Thanks to those of you who followed along with me on Facebook as I was putting this house together…you all made it a lot of fun! :)

PPS - I thought I would share a couple of pictures of my daughter’s birthday cake that I made last week; the cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting, the starfish and shells were all white chocolate, and the starfish were also dusted with some edible blue pearl dust:

Thanks so much for reading...wishing you all a great week~!