Assembling a Gingerbread House

I decided that this year was the year that I would finally attempt to build a gingerbread house (attempt being the key word here). I've always loved gingerbread and I've always wanted to decorate a gingerbread house. If I'm being completely honest, I thought I'd be really good at it. I love cooking and baking and I feel as though I'm quite creative in the kitchen, so you'd think that this would have been an easy task.

I bought a decorate your own gingerbread house kit from Morrisons for £5. Like I've already said, I've wanted to buy one of these for years, but never have. No one in my family except me likes gingerbread and I never wanted to eat a whole house to myself, but now that I live with my boyfriend (who loves gingerbread just as much as I do) there was no reason not to.

The thing I feared the most was that the gingerbread inside the box would be broken or cracked but luckily it wasn't and the house actually went up pretty easily. I've seen YouTube videos of people struggling to put together their gingerbread houses and them completely collapsing in on themselves or falling down before they've even had a chance to decorate them. I was actually quite impressed with how easy it was to assemble and how the icing stuck the pieces of gingerbread together pretty much instantly.

One of the things that made it nearly impossible to decorate even semi neatly was that as soon as I started to use the pouch of icing the bag popped and icing started spurting out of the top and sides as well as the main nozzle. This made it impossible to be accurate and it also made a huge mess of my hands and table. I was determined to carry on, I had such high hopes for what I wanted to accomplish and I wasn't going to let a few little holes in a bag stand in my way. I used duct tape to try and seal the holes but that didn't even work. This gingerbread house was doomed before it even had a chance.

I powered through and did what I could. Despite the wobbly lines and messy icing I actually quite like what I did with the design on the roof. It's jam packed full of candy and I think it looks quite impressive (from one angle anyway). I even added some icing sugar and a little bit of edible glitter to make it even more festive (not provided in the box).

It's not the neatest or most complete gingerbread house you'll see this winter but it was still a blast to decorate and it tastes amazing too. Although the gingerbread kit has it's positives, like the icing being pretty sticky and there being enough sweets provided for decoration, I probably won't be getting my gingerbread house from Morrisons next year as it was nearly impossible to decorate due to the bag of icing pretty much exploding in my hands before I'd even properly begun.