The Easiest Way To Make A Gingerbread House

Every year we make a gingerbread house from a kit.

This year we baked our own with a molded pan and it was fabulous. Here are all the DIY details!


We've been making gingerbread houses around here at Christmastime for as long as I can remember.

I guess you could call it a tradition. 

It didn't start out that way. I mean I never made them as a child.

And frankly, I don't even like gingerbread.

But one cold, holiday weekend, when the kids were small and bored, I dipped into my kindergarten teacher bag of tricks and pulled out the milk carton gingerbread house plans.

You remember those.

They were a crafty Christmas staple back in the day. And who knows they may still be. It's been a long time since anyone here was in a primary classroom.

The basic idea was, you gathered small lunch size milk cartons, slapped some royal frosting on the sides and roof, pushed on a few graham crackers and candy and poof! Instant gingerbread house.

The kids had a ball making them, so we indulged them. It was messy, but entertaining.

Then about a decade ago, the kits came out. How wonderful.

Everything you needed to make a house or castle or village came in the box. And with a 40% off coupon, they were reasonable.

However, this year, my daughter used her time during lockdown to learn how to bake. And bake she did. She made everything from lemon bars and chocolate chip cookies to shortbread cookies and pumpkin pie.

And all from scratch.

So when a friend told me she was having a Pampered Chef party, I figured why not join? Maybe I could find something fun for my little baker.


Well, needless to say, I bought several things. Among them a gingerbread house mold kit. 

To be honest, I was a little bit skeptical about the process and the pans. I've tried these things before and they haven't worked out. Early on in the house making game, I got a pan from Williams Sonama and it was disappointing.

The recipe was heavy, the cake never came out of the pan in one piece and it rusted after two seasons.

So let's just say I didn't have high hopes.

Which is why I'm sharing today, because friends, it was fantastic!! And I'm rarely this enthusiastic about anything that has to do with cooking. Seriously.

I was so taken with it, I decided to post in case anyone else wanted to give it a try.

How To Make A Pampered Chef Gingerbread House

To start, I want to state that we did not use gingerbread. We cheated - I do this often - and made our house with sugar cookie batter.

Like I said, we're not big fans of gingerbread, and while it does smell great, I didn't have the ingredients necessary, so we went basic.

If you would like to make it the right way, the pan does come with its own recipe.

We started by making the batter, greasing up the pans and baking them according to the directions. 

When they came out of the oven, we let them cool, again, as directed. When it was time to remove them from the pan, I was sure we were headed for disaster.


However, to my total shock and surprise, the panels just lifted out, in one piece. No harm, no foul. Amazing. 

At this point, we abandoned the instruction sheet and followed our gut. I didn't look, it might say something about trimming the pieces. Or not. But we did.


Using a butter knife, we just trimmed off any pieces that were jagged or uneven.

Basically anything that would keep the sides from adhering well to one another and sitting straight.


Next up, it was time to make our "glue". In the past, I've used royal frosting. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Either way, I was never a fan.

Then someone suggested caramelized sugar. Perfect. 

It was super simple to make. You just place the sugar in a pot and heat it, stirring well, until it turns to liquid.


The one caveat here is that it's hot, folks.

And I mean super hot.

So hot that I dropped a teeny bit of it on my finger and now I have a nasty blister kind of hot. So please, please, please be careful if you try this.

Once the sugar was in a liquid form, we dipped each side of the house into it and pushed the pieces together.

Everything stuck almost immediately.


It was like cement. Except it tasted really good. Well, once it cooled down. 

While we were waiting, we frosted a few ice cream cone trees to add around the house.


Next up, it was time to decorate. This is another place we used to run into trouble. Everything looks great until you try to add a gumdrop.

Then you risk collapse.

But ours didn't.

It held up through those gumdrops and candy nutcrackers. It stood strong when we frosted the roof and decorated the door.

That sucker didn't budge at all, no matter what we stuck to it.


When we were happy with our cottage and its forest of evergreens, we gave it a dusting of powdered sugar snow.

And like I said, it was fantastic!


Easy to make.

The pans performed like they stated they would- always a bonus.

Plus, we can continue our family tradition with a homemade, home baked holiday house from now on.

And for a DIY clan, what could be better than that?

Merry Christmas, friends!! 🎄🎄