Gingerbread House Kits Compared: What You Get in the Box

By Emily Patrikakos, Brand Executive at The Gourmet Pantry.

Both gingerbread house kits we stock cost $49.99 and contain the same things: pre-baked biscuit panels, a chimney, a baseboard, a sachet of royal icing mix, a piping bag and instructions. The difference is the biscuit. One is traditional spiced gingerbread, the other is chocolate. Neither box includes sweets, so the decorating is yours to buy.

Both kits are baked by Gingerbread Folk, an Australian baker whose biscuits make up most of our gingerbread range, and the kits are the part of that shelf people come looking for once December starts. The packaging is worth knowing about first. The box is 20cm by 27.5cm and only 4.7cm thick, because the panels ship flat. It posts without rattling and keeps in a cupboard until you want it.

What is actually in each box

These kits are sold as an activity, not a biscuit, so the useful question is what you still have to supply.

Two rows there matter most. The icing arrives as a mix, so you make it up at home and pipe it while it is soft. And the sweets on the roof of every gingerbread house you have seen in a photograph are not in the box. That is how the format works: the bakery supplies the building, your household supplies the taste.

Traditional or chocolate

The Gingerbread Folk Traditional Gingerbread House Kit is the one to buy if the house is going to be eaten. Spiced gingerbread, pale gold, and it takes white icing the way you expect gingerbread to. It is also listed as an egg free product, worth knowing if you are building with a child who cannot have egg. Read the allergen statement on the pack before you serve anyone with an allergy, because the label is the authority, not a website description.

The Chocolate Gingerbread House Kit is the one to buy if the house is going to be looked at. Dark chocolate gingerbread against white royal icing is a far stronger contrast than pale biscuit gives you, and it holds up on a table lit by candles. It comes as six pre-baked parts plus the chimney, on a foil baseboard.

Both finish at roughly 16cm high, 15cm wide and 12cm deep, which is a centrepiece rather than a doll's house. If you have more than two children who each want a wall of their own, buy two kits and let them build a street instead of negotiating over one roof. Two kits at full price sit just under the $100 line where our Australia-wide shipping becomes free, so a couple of gingerbread men in the same order will cover the postage.

What you have to add yourself

Sweets first. Small, dry and firm is what holds: round lollies for roof tiles, something long for the door frame, a scatter of white for snow. Buy more than the house needs, because a fair share gets eaten during construction. Soft or oily sweets slide down a vertical wall however much icing goes behind them, which is what most first-time builders learn the hard way.

Then something to build on. The kits include a baseboard, but a tray or a cake board underneath makes the finished house liftable, which matters when it has to move off the bench and onto the table. A Mini Folk pantry pack is the useful extra: around forty tiny gingerbread men in a box shaped like a house, good for lining a path and for handing to whoever is not holding the piping bag.

Time is the last thing to supply. Royal icing sets between stages, so the walls want to stand on their own before the roof goes on. Build in the afternoon, decorate after dinner, ready the next day. Among the rest of your festive entertaining essentials, give it a corner rather than the centre, clear of passing sleeves and serving spoons.

A kit suits a household with children in it, being a gift and an afternoon in one box. For the adults on the same list, our Christmas hampers do a different job, and the rest of the December table is in our guide to Christmas food in Australia.

Gluten free gingerbread, honestly

There is no gluten free gingerbread house kit in our range at the moment. It is the question we field most often about this category, and the honest answer is that the kit format has not arrived here in a gluten free version yet. What has: Gluten Free Kiddiewinks, twelve lightly spiced gingerbread figures in a 225g pack at $15.95, and the gluten free chocolate gingerbread man at $3.99, individually wrapped. Both sit in our gluten free range.

If one person at the table eats gluten free and the rest do not, build the house with the gluten eaters and give that guest Kiddiewinks and the leftover icing to decorate. Not the same thing, but everyone stays at the table with a piping bag.

Questions about gingerbread house kits

How much is a gingerbread house kit in Australia?

Ours are $49.99 each, traditional or chocolate. That buys pre-baked panels from an Australian baker, the royal icing mix, the piping bag, the baseboard and the instructions, with the sweets left to you. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday leave our packing room in Corio, Victoria, that day. Australia Post carries it from there, so order earlier than feels necessary in December.

What comes in a gingerbread house kit?

Pre-baked biscuit panels for the walls and roof, a chimney, a baseboard, a sachet of royal icing mix, a piping bag and instructions. The traditional kit lists four walls plus roof and chimney; the chocolate kit lists six pre-baked house parts plus the chimney and a foil baseboard. Sweets are not included in either box, and the icing is a mix you make up at home rather than a ready-made tube.

Is there a gluten free gingerbread house kit?

Not in our range right now. Both house kits are standard wheat gingerbread. Gingerbread Folk does bake gluten free, and we stock Gluten Free Kiddiewinks 225g at $15.95 and the gluten free chocolate gingerbread man at $3.99, both made in Australia. If a gluten free kit is ever added it will show on our gingerbread page first, so check there before you plan a build around it.

How long does a built gingerbread house last?

As a decoration, a finished house will stand through Christmas and past it if it lives somewhere dry and out of direct sun. As something to eat, the first few days are the good ones: the icing sets hard, but the biscuit softens once iced, and an Australian December is humid. Check the best before date on the box, and build late rather than early if the house is meant to be eaten.

Two kits, one price, and the only real decision is whether the house gets eaten or photographed. Both are on our gingerbread page, and the finished house usually ends up on the Australian Christmas dessert table with everything else sweet.