Fresh home furnishing ideas and affordable furniture - IKEA
Our IKEA-inspired gingerbread creation
Mmm. Gingerbread. A DIY holiday decoration you can eat, too? Delicious—especially the mistakes! This year, we decided to make a gingerbread house inspired by IKEA. But we took it one step further and made our IKEA—the Ideas Lab in cookie form! Come see.
Digital designer Lasse and interior designer Geneviève were part of the team who came up with the idea. Instead of the traditional four walls and a roof, it’s a ‘studio-style’ living room like we use in the IKEA Ideas Lab with two fake walls and tiny, tasty iconic IKEA furniture. It was Gen’s first gingerbread house, so Lasse took the lead.
We wanted to make something IKEA but more challenging than a boxy store. We got stuck on the idea of doll’s furniture, and it worked.
Before you get started, gather what you’ll need. We used PEPPARKAKA DEG for our ready-made dough, a baking sheet, baking paper, scissors, a spatula, a rolling pin, a pizza cutter, a pastry bag with piping tubes, a knife, two wooden sticks, some powdered sugar, granulated sugar, egg whites and vinegar.
When you’ve lightly floured the dough and are rolling it out, the key is to get it thin enough to work with and thick enough that it doesn’t break easily. Here’s what Gen learned. Place the two wooden sticks (about 3 mm thick) on the edges of your dough as guides. Roll the dough until it’s the same thickness as the sticks. Then it’s just right. Dream up what you want to make and play around with the dough!
Our two walls are rectangular pieces of dough, and the ‘wooden’ floor is small strips (baked for various times to make slightly different colours). There’s a LACK table, KOLDBY cowhide rug and even a few presents, too. Want to bake your own KLIPPAN sofa? Check out our step-by-step guide. To make a glue, you can melt some granulated sugar in a frying pan. For support while the sugar dries, use whatever packaging or cartons you have. Lasse used some pieces of wood because it’s everywhere in our real studio!
For a cute final touch, we added architectural details with frosting (also great for covering any uneven edges). Gen and Lasse used an easy frosting made from whipped egg whites, vinegar and powdered sugar piped out in a pastry bag. You can always sprinkle on some powdered sugar as a bit of snow, use gelatin sheets as window panes or add candy pieces as cushions or wall art. Even a little tree, too! Who knows what other kinds of IKEA-inspired gingerbread you can make!
My favourite part was waiting for the pieces to bake. The entire studio smelled like gingerbread!
We love to see our customers get creative with our products. Go for it! But please note that altering or modifying IKEA products so they can no longer be re-sold or used for their original purpose, means the IKEA commercial guarantees and your right to return the products will be lost.
Made by
Interior designer: Geneviève Jorn
Photographer: Micke Persson