The Best Gingerbread House Kit, According to Our Tests

Building a gingerbread house is meant to be a sugar-filled, joyful holiday activity (or an intense competition, if your family is anything like mine). Assembling spiced, molasses-sweetened cookies into a cozy little cottage adorned with colorful candy and icing icicles has been a beloved holiday tradition since the 1800s. It’s said that the custom likely gained popularity thanks to the 1812 Brothers Grimm folktale Hansel and Gretel. 

If the idea of baking a homemade gingerbread house from scratch intimidates you, you’re not alone. Fortunately, there are countless prebaked gingerbread house kits available in stores during the holiday season. Taking into account everything from ease of construction to candy selection, I tested six gingerbread house kits to find the very best.

A word about my method

I judged each kit on ease of construction, icing adhesiveness, and candy selection. I only used the items that were included in the kit — no additional candy or decorations allowed. For each house, I followed the assembly instructions and decorated it (to the best of my ability) to match the image on the box.

A note about my qualifications

When I was a student at Texas A&M University in 2013, I helped the Traditions Golf Club build the Guinness World Records’ largest gingerbread house in Bryan, Texas. The 60-foot-long house was baked with 1,800 pounds of butter and decorated with over 22,000 pieces of candy. Once it was built, tickets were sold to the public to tour the gingerbread house and proceeds were donated to St. Joseph’s Trauma Center.

Winner: Favorite Day Classic House Gingerbread Kit

Overall score: 10/10
Ease of construction: 9/10
Icing quality: 10/10
Candy selection: 8/10

Target’s store brand, Favorite Day, was the runaway favorite of my test. There were two key differences that set this kit apart from the rest. First, while the icing came in an airtight pouch much like the other kits, this one also included a disposable piping bag. The pointed tip and control of the piping bag made drawing fine lines and piping decorations so much easier. The second game-changing aspect: The instructions said to decorate the cookie pieces before assembling the house. Decorating walls on a flat surface, rather than working against gravity when they’re upright, was a revelation.

This kit also included bonus pieces like a chimney and front door awning. While it didn’t come with a huge array of candy, the types included were fun and on-theme, like multicolored mini Christmas lights and poinsettia leaves.

Runner-up: Candy Land Gingerbread House Kit

Overall score: 9.5/10
Ease of construction: 9/10
Icing quality: 8/10
Candy selection: 8/10

Inspired by the popular board game, this Candy Land-themed gingerbread house kit came with an assortment of colorful candies for decorating. It was simple to construct thanks to the plastic base, which included grooves to hold the walls. Because the roof pieces were quite thick and heavy, I had to hold them in place for about five minutes to allow the icing to set, but once it dried the construction was solid. 

The kit contained plenty of icing for assembly and decorating, plus the icing pouch had a thin, extended nozzle-like section that made it simple to pipe thin lines. A few of the cookie pieces required trimming to clean up the edges, but that was easy to do with a paring knife. Overall, the kit produced a house that was sturdy, quick to build, and fun to decorate. 

Best splurge: Gingerbread Traditions Traditional Gingerbread House Kit

Overall score: 9/10
Ease of construction: 8/10
Icing quality: 9/10
Candy selection: 8/10

The cookies in this kit had an intense sweet, spiced aroma of freshly baked gingerbread. They also had a darker color (probably from a generous amount of molasses in the dough) that provided a nice contrast to the stark white icing. The icing was smooth and glossy, and adhered well to the cookies, but took longer to dry — the instructions said to let the assembled house stand overnight before decorating. 

This was the only house I tested that had actual cutouts for windows, giving the option to fill with melted hard candy for a stained-glass effect. The kit also included thoughtful additions like gingerbread people, a Christmas tree cookie, a three-dimensional roof, and candy canes.

Gingerbread Traditions is a family-run company based in Portland, Oregon. On its website the company offers several gingerbread house styles to pick from, like a chateau, a cabin, and even a dog house, assembled or unassembled.

Why some houses didn’t make the list

For the most part, the reason houses fell short was because of the icing. A thick icing consistency or an icing that wouldn’t stick to the gingerbread made it extremely difficult and frustrating to construct the house. Also, the package shape of the icing pouch played a part. Several pouches had square corners, which were not ideal for piping thin lines. One pouch even burst open at the seam when I was piping. Besides icing, another shortcoming of a few of the kits is that they didn’t come with enough candy to decorate all sides of the house. 

While two of the houses arrived with a broken cookie piece, I didn’t let this weigh on the results too much. Both of these kits were shipped, rather than picked up in person. Lesson learned: Take the time to go pick up your gingerbread house kit at the store.