This gingerbread house cake pan from Nordicware is the perfect solution. Technically called a "fairytale cottage" Bundt pan, this cake pan allows you to bake and decorate your very own gingerbread house from scratch in less than two hours.
The Pros of This Gingerbread House Bundt Cake Pan
- It is faster than making a gingerbread house from scratch. Indeed, the longest time is spent waiting for the cake to bake.
- It is much easier than assembling a gingerbread house -- even a pre-baked gingerbread house from a kit. That's because you don't have to worry about making sure the walls are perfectly straight or waiting for the icing to harden before you can go on to the next step.
- You can use this pan over and over again for many occasions, such as birthdays, Halloween (to make a scary gingerbread house), or even school projects.
- There's no need to make royal icing. You can use any store-bought icing, because you don't need the icing to harden enough to glue the sides of the house together.
Plus, the candy will stick with regular icing or gel icing, too. If you want to make your own royal icing, that will certainly work. But it isn't necessary.
- It tastes good. This is a gingerbread house you will want to eat.
- It's easy to eat. You can cut it up and serve slices for dessert on Christmas Eve!
- You can use any flavor Bundt cake recipe you want or even a Bundt cake mix. (They come in flavors ranging from tunnel of fudge to sticky toffee pudding.) I've made chocolate cakes, carrot cakes, and spice cakes with this pan.
- Decorating is easy. Kids as little as four or five will be able to decorate this gingerbread house. There's no need to to pipe icing from a pastry bag -- you can use regular icing or gel icing. And all of the parts of the house are big enough and easy enough for little hands to reach.
The Cons of This Gingerbread House Cake Pan
- It doesn't look exactly like a typical gingerbread house. As you can see from the picture, this gingerbread house comes out looking, well, cakey.
- You can't decorate as much with this gingerbread cake as you can with a regular gingerbread house. Because the sides of the house are sloped, and the architecture of the house is pre-formed, you are more limited in the decoration you can do.
You can't make a gingerbread tree house, a gingerbread post office or a modern gingerbread penthouse with this cake pan. Then again, do you really want to make a gingerbread penthouse?
- You have to use a Bundt cake recipe or a Bundt cake mix. Otherwise, you may not get all the detail on the lower edges of the pan. Bundt recipes are more dense than traditional cake recipes.
That having been said, another alternative, which worked fabulously for me, was to use two boxed cake mixes. I put a sheet pan underneath the bundt pan in the oven and allowed the excess batter to spill over. When the cake came out, I was able to slice all the excess off to make a smooth bottom. And the kids got to munch on the excess cake while we were decorating!
