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How To Make A Halloween Gingerbread House

One of my favorite holiday activities is building gingerbread houses with my friends and family. Eating cookies, listening to holiday jingles and being reminded why I am not an engineering major each time my house falls apart is a special pastime. This year, we will all get to enjoy that experience a few weeks earlier as stores launch Halloween-themed gingerbread houses

Buy a pre-built gingerbread cookie cottage or construct your own gingerbread mansion and decorate your ghoulish abode to display all Halloween season.

Where can you buy a Halloween gingerbread house kit?

Whether you are looking for a pre-built gingerbread abode or are ready to try your hand at carpentry, there are a variety of kits available for purchase.

Target’s Favorite Day brand offers every type of gingerbread home, from cottages and mansions to entire villages. For $4, you can construct a cozy moonlit cottage that comes with orange icing and green, orange, and black candy for decorating. 

Grab one of Favorite Day’s village sets, which come either pre-built or ready for construction, and host a gingerbread house decorating party with friends.

The town scare haunted village set comes with three vertical houses and icing and candy for decoration, as well as ghost, zombie, and cat cookies to live in your spooky town. Favorite Day’s pre-built haunted village is constructed with sugar cookies and accompanied with colorful icing and gumdrops. 

Halloween lovers will enjoy Favorite Day’s elaborate haunted mansion gingerbread house, which provides ample space, icing and candy to let your creativity run wild. 

Trader Joe’s knows not everyone is ready to usher in the holiday season and its flavors, so it’s combining all of the fun of constructing a gingerbread house with the delicious taste of chocolate cookies. The store’s $10 haunted house chocolate cookie kit features a quaint, ready-to-assemble house that is not only kosher, but features decorating materials dyed with natural ingredients like pumpkin and carrot

If you’re looking to indulge on your cookie house real estate, Williams Sonoma offers a haunted house kit made with Ghirardelli chocolate cookies, which is currently on sale for $28. 

How should you decorate your Halloween gingerbread house?

Constructing your own gingerbread house requires grit, concentration, and a lot of icing, but it is doable. Use icing like glue to connect the gingerbread walls, and be careful to use a sufficient amount but not so much that it is spilling out of the sides. If some of your gingerbread cookie walls are lopsided, use a knife to trim them and make them more even.

Once you have completed the hurdle of constructing a gingerbread house, decorating it is your opportunity to celebrate the spooky season with orange, purple, and green icing and candies.

Social media is full of creative ideas for how to decorate your gingerbread house. Maddie Quinn Rhome posted her Halloween gingerbread house decorations to TikTok, showcasing a scalloped roof and a welcoming ghost resident.

@maddie.quinn

since my other gingerbread house did well, I figured I’d make a spooky halloween edition! 🎃👻 #fall #halloween #gingerbreadhouse

♬ Monster Mash – Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers

Some bakers have showcased their own constructions of gingerbread houses, like Amber Spiegel, who created a glowing gingerbread house that incorporates pink and black icing into the spooky treat.

Whether you are a professional baker or just a Halloween lover, crafting a Halloween gingerbread house kit is the perfect fall activity.

Taylor Motley is a member of the Spoon University National Writers Program, reporting on food news and trends.

Beyond Spoon University, Taylor is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in Media & Journalism and English & Comparative Literature, with a concentration in Film Studies. She is the City & State Editor at The Daily Tar Heel, UNC-Chapel Hill's student-run newspaper, where she oversees coverage of local news and politics in Orange County, North Carolina. She has also written for Chapel Hill Magazine, reporting on local events and restaurants, as well as Coulture Magazine, where she covers film, music and culture.

In her free time, Taylor loves to watch all genres of movies, read new books and spend time with her friends and family. She is an avid cultural critic and enjoys reviewing films, theatre productions and restaurants.