Name: Royal Icing Recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Ingredients: 2 lbs powdered sugar; 7 tablespoons meringue powder; ¾ cup warm water

A Halloween 3D cookie house with Beetlejuice inspired decorations.

Customizing a Pre-Made, Store-Bought, Cookie House Kit

I made this cookie house using a Haunted House Chocolate Cookie Kit from Trader Joe’s. I’ve made dozens of cookie house over the years, for every holiday, and I own a ridiculous amount of gingerbread house cookie cutters. But I love being able to just grab an inexpensive, pre-made kit from the store, to customize.

A Trader Joe's Haunted House Chocolate Cookie Kit Box — Good ‘ol, trusty Trader Joe’s!

This is a multi-day process. Day 1 you will decorate all the cookies, then I let them dry overnight. Day 2, after the cookies are completely dry, you can assemble the house and add embellishments.

An unboxed Trader Joe's Haunted House Chocolate Cookie Kit — This particular kit comes with all the cookie pieces needed to assemble the house, a cookie base, icing, and assorted candies.

Cookie pieces and sprinkles from a Trader Joe's Haunted House Chocolate Cookie Kit — I tossed out the icing, but kept most of the candies that fit with my theme.

Various containers of assorted sprinkles — I have A LOT of sprinkles and candies. I grabbed all the Halloween sprinkles, along with some mixes that had sprinkles that matched my color theme.

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Day 1

Supplies Needed:

Pre-made cookie house kit
One batch of royal icing
Gel food coloring: whitener, black, neon green, purple
Scribe tool/boo boo stick/toothpicks
Icing bags or bottles for flooding icing
Piping bags for stiff detail icing
Wilton #16 & #18 star tip
Sprinkles/candies
Edible pen
Citrus zester
Scissors
Ruler
4 room temp cans of soda, bottles of water, canned goods, or heavy cups. You will use these to hold your cookie pieces together during assembly

If making the sandworm cookie, you will need:

Chocolate cookie dough
Rolling pin
Silicone baking mats or parchment paper
Cookie sheet
X-acto knife/razor blade/sharp paring knife
Sandworm printable
Cardstock
Red gel food coloring

Step 1:

If making the sandworm cookie, you will need a batch of chocolate cookie dough that has been chilled for at least 4 hours.
Print out the sandworm printable on cardstock, cut out the pieces, and use as a stencil to cut out cookies with an x-acto blade or sharp knife.
Cut out 4 small rectangle cookies (about ½″ x 1″ in size) to help stabilize the sandworm during assembly.

Beetlejuice-House-Sandworm-Printable Download

Beetlejuice Sandworm cookies and cookie template — Use an x-acto knife to cut out sandworm cookies.

Step 2:

Make a batch of flooding consistency royal icing and divide it into 4 equal parts.
Leave ¼ white, then make green, purple and black icing.

Make sure not to overfill your icing bags. I ended up with 2 bags of each color.

4 bags of royal icing. Purple, black, neon green, and white. — Purple, black, neon green, and white flooding icing.

Step 3:

Prepare your cookies!

Most cookies in pre-made kits have jagged edges, so I always shave them down with a citrus zester. Cleaning up the edges will help the pieces fit together better during assembly.

Before shaving down the edges of the cookies with a citrus zester.

After cleaning up the edges of the cookies with a citrus zester.

Step 4:

Using an edible pen, draw out the designs on your cookies for the black and white stripes.
Since one of the front/back pieces will be the back of the house, you only need to decorate the door and windows on one piece.

Note: I did mess up a little at this point with the side pieces. The house assembles with the side pieces in a vertical position, so I ended up with horizontal lines on the sides of the house. I liked how it looked, so it wasn’t a big deal, but if you want your stripes vertically on the sides, draw your lines going vertically.

Step 5:

Flood in windows on front and side pieces green.
Flood door on front piece purple.
Flood every other scalloped section on the roof pieces green, and add sprinkles while icing is still wet. I suggest doing one section at a time, as the icing will start to dry before you can add all the sprinkles.

Step 6:

Flood base cookie green. Because the cookie is very large, and the icing can start drying before you have flooded the entire cookie, leave the center bit un-flooded. Or you can go back and flood that piece later, but it will be covered by the house.

If icing starts to drip off the sides, because of the amount of icing, just wipe it away. Don’t worry if the edges aren’t perfect, because you’re going to cover that with detail later on.

Step 7:

Flood every other stripe white on the sides, front, and back pieces.
Flood every other remaining scalloped section on the roof pieces with purple icing, and add sprinkles while icing is still wet.

Step 8:

Fill in remaining stripes with black icing on sides, front, and back pieces.
Set cookies aside after they are done, and allow to dry for a bit.

Step 9:

Decorate sandworm cookies. I used a wet-on-wet technique for the stripes.

I dried the sandworm cookies under a fan to prevent bleeding.

Step 10:

At this point, you can take your remaining flooding icing colors and make detail and stiff icing with them. You will need to make:

A small amount of black detail icing for window pane lines.
Use remaining black icing and make very stiff icing and place in a piping bag fitted with a #18 star tip.
Make a small amount of green icing into detail icing to use for sandworm details.
Use remaining green icing and make very stiff icing and place in a piping bag fitted with a #16 star tip.
Using your white flooding icing, make a small amount of red detail icing for sandworm eyes.
Use remining white icing and make it into detail icing that will be used to “glue” the house together during assembly.

How to Make Stiff Icing

Step 11:

Finish details on cookies!
Then allow everything to dry overnight.

After making dozens of cookie houses over the years, I have learned that it’s easier to add piping details before assembling the pieces. That way you aren’t having to work at weird angles once the house is all glued together.

Add eyes, mouths, and teeth to sandworm. I used an edible pen to draw stripes on tongue.

Glue candies or sprinkles around front door. Add window pane lines to windows with detail icing. Pipe around windows with stiff black icing using a #18 star tip.

Pipe around sides and bottoms of roof pieces with stiff black icing using a #18 star tip. I place the cookies on some parchment paper so I can move them around without smooshing the icing.

Pipe around side of the base piece with stiff black icing using a #18 star tip. I place the cookie on some parchment paper so I can move it around without smooshing the icing.