Pipe the edges with building icing.
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
Jaci Hicken, our seasoned journalist and trained chef, shares her wealth of knowledge on growing, cooking, and preserving homegrown produce. In this edition, Jaci tries her hand at building a flat-pack gingerbread house. Will she succeed?
This is my first attempt at building a gingerbread house.
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Instead of going to the effort of making gingerbread, rolling it out, cutting it into shapes, measuring it all up, or getting a mould to make a gingerbread house, I'm going to make one from a flat pack from the supermarket.
The flat pack came with everything you need: gingerbread house walls and roof, building and decorating icing and lollies to garnish your masterpiece.
Because it is my first time, much like my first time cooking anything, I’m going to follow the instructions.
Instruction one: Lay the gingerbread house pieces on a flat surface.
What other sort of surface would you lay it on if not a flat surface?
Then with the front and back panels lying face down, pipe the building icing along the short edges.
Following the pictures in the instructions means the short edges of the walls.
There is a clear plastic stand that came in the box and even though it is not said (maybe it is, but I’m not wearing my glasses, so reading the fine print isn’t the easiest), you have to pipe the building icing along the channel in the clear plastic stand.
Which makes sense, because how else would it stand up?
Instruction two: Your house is now ready to be built.
Placing the two roof panels on the walls, I notice that the whole thing is not straight.
Will it stand?
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
On closer inspection, one of the gabled walls has a squashed corner at the bottom, as if it was squashed when the gingerbread was removed from the cooking mould.
This means that my gingerbread house is pretty crooked.
There is a chance that whoever made the side panels in a factory was not a registered gingerbread house builder.
In my kitchen, that wall would have never passed inspection.
Will it hold?
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
Instruction three: Now you can decorate your gingerbread house.
Decorating is not my strong point.
When building a gingerbread house again, it might be an idea to decorate the walls and roof, let them dry, before standing them up and joining them together.
At this point, you may have to see it to believe what happens next, but you could say I ‘nailed it’.
Today's ‘Jaci can cook’ is about telling you that I'm not perfect, and there are many, many things I can't cook.
Cake decorating isn't a strong point of mine, so next time I’m leaving it to the professionals.
But in hindsight, we should give everything a go, as it doesn’t really matter if it works or not.
Anyway, thanks for following along in 2025 and I hope you enjoyed this peek inside my kitchen.
Wishing everybody a safe and happy holidays and I will talk to you all again in 2026.
Merry Christmas.
– Jaci
Take a sneak peek at Jaci building her gingerbread house and if she succeeded, online and in the app.
Do you have a culinary secret to share or something you would like Jaci to cook in 2026? Let Jaci know atjaci.hicken@mmg.com.au.
NAILED IT!
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
Jaci can't build a gingerbread house
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
