Gingerbread Wars White Flag by Ruth Paget
I saw that Food Network runs a TV show now called Holiday Gingerbread Showdown, a competition about who builds the best gingerbread house often with a theme.
I looked the show up online and realized this is becoming an established cultural phenomenon with events happening in places like Naples, Italy for military families and at Boston University.
I feel hopelessly left out of the competition due to lack of skills. When my daughter Florence Paget was little, we went to Cost Plus World Market and bought a gingerbread house kits. (4 different kinds of gingerbread house kits are available and on sale at Cost Plus World Market for $11.89 in Seaside, California with pre-baked panels, icing, candies, gummies, sprinkles, paper cut outs, and tray as of today 12-11-2025).
Even with a pre-fab gingerbread house, my gingerbread house looked more like a log cabin than a snow-covered Hansel and Gretel cottage.
Fortunately, the icing tasted good and the gingerbread was easy to chop up for sprinkles on ice cream.
When Florence became older, one of her friend’s mom held gingerbread house decorating parties not competitions. My fellow mom knew how to make sticky icing that would hold gummies on the side of a house.
My testimonial on the gingerbread house kit is that it is fun to do as part of a larger activity. I would read the Gingerbread Man story book to Florence before building the house and have her work on a Gingerbread Man coloring book as part of Gingerbread House Day. I would play Christmas carols that we would sing along to as well.
Now I would add watching the Food Network Gingerbread House Competition to this list of activities.
The gingerbread itself is bitter, which is why I put chopped pieces in ice cream. It is also good dunked in tea with honey in it.
We no longer build gingerbread houses, but if you have younger children, I would recommend doing one of the gingerbread house kits at Cost Plus World Market as a Christmas week activity. Walmart and Target also sell gingerbread house kits. Older teens might like Amazon’s gingerbread house kits - these kits prepare you for gingerbread wars.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
