How to make a Christmas Candy Train

In today's post: Learn how to make an adorable Christmas candy railroad train out of graham crackers (much easier than gingerbread!).

My kids love making gingerbread houses at Christmas fourth dimension. It's a fun tradition, but permit me tell you, making a gingerbread business firm from homemade gingerbread is a labor of beloved. You gotta mix the gingerbread, and bake the gingerbread, and cutting the gingerbread, and let it cool, then make the regal icing and get together the houses and let them set up and And so first decorating. Information technology's a great Christmas tradition IF you have enough of fourth dimension and kids that are one-time enough to actually aid (ten+).

If, on the other hand, you are looking for a gingerbread-house type project that works for younger kids (and won't take hours of prep), I HIGHLY recommend going the graham cracker route. You lot can either brand a elementary graham cracker house like this i we fabricated for Easter OR you lot can make a graham cracker Christmas Candy Train:

This graham cracker train is super beautiful and offers lots of decorating possibilities, but it's quite a bit simpler to put together than a house. The train cars are particularly easy, making them perfect for younger kids. The engine takes a flake more than constructing, just I'll tell you lot exactly how to do it!

PRO TIP: The hardest part about any of these gingerbread or graham cracker creations is waiting a few minutes to allow the main structure ready up BEFORE decorating. If you take lots of kids to help or are working with very young kids, you should consider building the basic railroad train boxes in accelerate and letting them prepare up completely. It tin be super frustrating to footling kids to try to build a processed train and take information technology collapse because they can't wait the 5-x minutes required for the structure to ready. You can avoid this by building it for them in advance, and so letting your kid become straight to decorating, which is what the littlest kids will be most interested in doing anyhow.

Also, each child should programme to make ane train auto or engine. Trying to build an engine plus two cars (as you see in my photos) volition take well-nigh kids longer than their involvement will terminal.

Christmas Train Supplies

This picture shows everything I used to brand my Christmas candy train:

There are 3 basic supplies y'all need to build a graham cracker Christmas train car or engine:

Graham crackers for walls
Oreos for wheels
White chocolate chips or candy melts for "mucilage"

To decorate the railroad train cars, I also used:

Mini K&1000's
Christmas sprinkles

And to stop off the train engine, I used:

miniature Reese'south cups to make a smokestack
a modest circular iced cookie and
a peppermint stick

What should I use to "glue" pieces together?

It's traditional to apply purple icing to construct gingerbread or graham crackers houses, just I have switched to using melted white chocolate fries (or processed melts) instead. Here'south why:

Melting white chocolate chips is a lot easier than mixing upwards majestic icing
The chocolate sets up much faster than royal icing does

You tin can place white chocolate chips in a small-scale ziplock purse and microwave it for 30-40 seconds until it's melted. Snip off a very modest corner of the bag, and you are fix to pipe white chocolate "gum". Once you glue the train box together, it will gear up up at room temp in under 10 minutes. To set it even faster, you can construct the railroad train box on a paper plate or cutting board and pop information technology in the freezer – in nearly 2-three minutes y'all'll be ready to move to the next step.