30 Gingerbread House Ideas Kids Can Actually Make

Start with a graham cracker house on a milk carton: the walls can’t fall, and the kids get to the candy in ten minutes.

10 easy builds and shortcuts

These are for kids 3 to 6, or any family that wants to skip baking. A grown-up builds; kids decorate.

No-bake bases

1. Start here Graham cracker house on a milk carton. Rinse and dry a small milk carton, glue graham crackers to each side with thick icing, and lean two more on top as a roof.
2. Juice box cabin. Wrap a juice box in graham crackers for a squat little cabin that never tips over.
3. Paper cup tower. Turn a paper cup upside down, cover it in icing and graham cracker pieces, and add an ice cream cone roof.
4. Cracker A-frame. Lean two graham crackers together on a plate, ice the seam, and you have a tent-shaped house in two minutes.

Shortcuts for busy nights

5. Store-bought kit, your own candy. Buy a plain kit, skip the candy inside and use what you have in the pantry.
6. Pre-built walls. A grown-up builds the house the night before, and the kids wake up to decorating.
7. One house per kid on a paper plate. Small houses mean no fights over who decorates the roof.
8. Half-house on a cookie sheet. Build only the front wall flat on a tray, like a picture, and decorate it like a face.
9. Cookie village. Skip walls entirely: lay flat cookies on a board and decorate each as a house front.
10. Sandwich bread house. Toast bread until dry, cut walls with a knife and glue with peanut butter or icing.

10 house designs

For kids 6 and up who want their house to look like something. These take a full afternoon.

Classic shapes

11. Log cabin. Use pretzel sticks laid side by side for the walls and a shredded wheat roof that looks like thatch.
12. Candy cane fence. Stick small candy canes into icing around the base for a fence.
13. Stained glass windows. Crush hard candies, fill cut-out windows on a baked cookie wall and bake again until they melt, with a grown-up at the oven.
14. Two-story house. Stack two carton bases, one smaller, and connect them with icing.

Baking your own walls instead of using a kit? Most gingerbread recipes bake at 350 °F, about 175 to 180 °C. If you follow a recipe from abroad, a cup can be 236 ml or 250 ml depending on the country, and an Australian tablespoon is 20 ml, not 15.

This guide explains which cup a recipe means. For a gingerbread house the difference is small, but it shows in cookie dough.

Themed houses

15. Snowy cottage. Cover the roof in shredded coconut or powdered sugar for snow.
16. Barn. Use red icing walls, a white icing X on the door and pretzel hay bales.
17. Igloo. Stack sugar cubes in a circle on a plate, glued with icing, and leave a door gap.
18. Beach house for the winter. Add a blue icing pool, a paper umbrella and a graham cracker deck.
19. Candy shop. Fill the front window with tiny candies, as if the shop is open.
20. Lighthouse. Build a tall tower from a paper towel roll wrapped in icing, with a cone roof.

Number 17, the sugar cube igloo, is my favorite on this page. It looks impressive and only needs one ingredient.

10 decorating ideas and things that aren’t houses

The best part for most kids. Set out bowls of candy and let them go.

Roofs, paths and yards

21. Shingle roof. Overlap round candies or cereal in rows from the bottom up.
22. Stone path. Press a line of round candies into icing from the door to the edge of the board.
23. Gumdrop trees. Stack gumdrops in a cone, or ice an upside-down ice cream cone green.
24. Pretzel woodpile. Stack short pretzel sticks by the door, as if the house has a fireplace.
25. Icicles. Pipe icing along the roof edge and pull down with the tip for drips.

Not a house at all

26. Gingerbread train. Decorate long cookies as train cars and link them with icing.
27. Gingerbread sleigh. Build a low box from cookies and fill it with tiny wrapped candies.
28. Gingerbread barn animals. Cut animal shapes from dough and stand them up with a dab of icing.
29. Gingerbread tree. Stack star-shaped cookies from big to small and turn each one a little.
30. Gingerbread family portrait. Decorate one gingerbread person for each family member, pets included.

A few notes on gingerbread

English Heritage says the house in the Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel was made of bread, with a cake roof and sugar windows, not gingerbread. Britannica credits Queen Elizabeth I with the gingerbread man, so number 30 has royal roots.

For more December ideas, try our Christmas crafts for kids, the Christmas scavenger hunt and our list of Christmas traditions. If the elf is visiting, a tiny gingerbread house makes a good Elf on the Shelf setup. The rest live in the Family hub, and we explain how we write these lists on How we pick.

I always forget how good the house looks once the powdered sugar snow goes on. It hides every crooked wall.