How do you make a sugar cube house?

Answer 1

I've made a sugar cube castle before, so I assume it's a similar process: You'll need a cake board, or some sort of firm cardboard base to build your house on. And you'll need lots of sugar cubes (probably many more than you'd think). Royal icing is the best way to cement everything together, since it dries slowly and really firmly.

The best place to start is working out exactly how big the base of your house should be, and cutting out a template in the same size. It's easiest to go with a square or rectangular base; angles of less than 90 degrees (i.e pentagonal house etc...) or curves are really difficult to construct out of sugar cubes. Make sure that the corners on your template are exactly 90 degrees, since it will be really difficult to construct the house if the walls begin to warp or spread into non-standard shapes.

Place the template onto the cardboard base, and use a piping bag to pipe a thick line of royal icing around the template (you may wish to pre-test your icing to make sure that it sets rock solid - if it does not, you've added too much water. Setting can take up to 24 hours). Place your first layer of sugar cubes all around the template, making sure they are firmly pressed into the icing (try to ensure that the corners are definitely at right angles). Remove the template, but keep it to check that subsequent layers are now bowing outwards or inwards.

If you're using sugar cubes which are really regular in shape, there's no need to try and match them for size, however if your sugar cubes are "rough cut", you really do need to try to ensure they're all the same size. If your sugar cubes are really cuboids (i.e one set of sides is longer than the others), it's best to use them widest-sides top and bottom (so that the wall is really stable).

Add more royal icing over your first layer of cubes and keep building up layers. If you wish to add doors, windows etc.,it's best to use small strong pieces of cardboard cut to reinforce the edges of the gaps you'll be creating (you can royal icing over the cardboard).

I think for the roof you may need to use some sort of cardboard scaffolding or possibly a frame made out of rectangular ice cream wafers. Probably it will be necessary to build up triangles out of sugar cubes on the sides of the house, and then stick the cardboard/wafer structure on top using a lot of royal icing. (Then just drip a huge amount of royal icing over the roof, to cover it).