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This Gingerbread Cake is perfect for the holidays! A moist and delicious ginger cake with a tangy cream cheese frosting.

My piping game is not on point — I seriously need to spend some time practicing. It would help if my hands weren’t totally shaking any time I try to pipe something.

I could never be a surgeon or a professional Jenga player. Needless to say, the most tedious and frustrating part of this gingerbread cake was the gingerbread houses.

What I thought would be a quick, easy, adorable addition turned out to be a huge pain in the butt. Mostly due to my impatience, which is nothing new!

I always have a hard time trying to decide how I want to decorate my cakes. I usually end up on Pinterest, disillusioned and grumpy, searching for ideas.

The inspiration for this cake came from this adorable one that I came across. SO cute right?? Her gingerbread houses are clearly homemade, but there was no way in heeeeelll that I was doing that.



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So there I am, 10pm on a Tuesday night, and I’m searching online for mini gingerbread houses, wondering where I can get them asap locally.

I can’t even remember how I knew that you could buy a mini gingerbread house kit. Maybe I had seen it somewhere before? No idea.

These were easier to find than expected, but of course, I was panicked about it since I had a schedule I wanted to stick to. I was thisclose to heading to Walmart at 10:30pm to check if they had them.

Sanity kicked in and I waited till the next day and got them at Michaels. Of course, I’m seeing them everywhere now!

The fact that the gingerbread kit came with pre-made royal icing was a bonus. This was going to be so easy! (Yeah right).

I separated all the pieces and trimmed them so they were perfectly straight and the same size. You don’t need to do this, but it certainly helps with assembly and getting a cleaner look.

I piped the details of each side and roof before assembling the houses, as I figured it would be easier that way (it was, for the most part).

The issue came with the waiting time.

You had to wait like an hour (at least) for the icing to dry so you could assemble the houses. Then, once the sides were put together, you were supposed to wait like 3 more hours before putting the roof on – what?! Who has that kinda time/patience? Not I.

I did wait a good hour and was pretty proud of myself for even lasting that long. To no surprise, the houses weren’t quite set and were wobbly as I was putting them together. For the most part, it went ok, except for the ONE house I wanted to be perfect: the damn A-frame.

This one was the trickiest to put together because it doesn’t have 4 walls standing so you can just slap the roof on. It had to be assembled in one go.

Decorating these pieces in advance made it harder to put this one together. Now that I think about it, I probably should have read the instructions on how to put this one together properly. Meh. Anyhow, it was a mess.

The front and back kept sliding inwards, and I hadn’t let the decorations on the roof dry enough, so I was making nice dents in them. SIGH. Finally, it was standing on its own and I left it… for about an hour (NOT long enough).

I still had to put the finishing touches on it — the icing around the front (which I scraped off 3x because I didn’t like it) and the icicles (which you can’t even really tell are there). Needless to say, the stupid thing collapsed on me multiple times, and I ended up having to take it apart altogether and redo it.

Why is nothing easy? Oh yeah, because I rush and don’t follow instructions.

ANYhow, after spending WAY more time than expected on these houses, I had finally finished them and left them to set properly overnight.

I wasn’t going to use the A-frame on the cake after all since I wasn’t happy with how it turned out, but it was really the only one that fit properly on this 6″ cake. Plus, I still think it’s the cutest one. So, despite it not being perfect, there it is, perched on top of this Gingerbread Cake.

I used Wilton petal tip #102 (I think? I’m also terrible at writing things down – it was either #102 or #103) to do the front of the houses, but otherwise, I used the small round tip that was provided in the kit.

I love how well the petal tip worked! This was actually the first thing I tried on the A-frame, but I decided I didn’t like it, scraped it off, tried a couple other ways, scraped those off, and redid the ruffle… again. FML.

House decorating issues aside, I’m pretty happy with the way this Gingerbread Cake turned out!

The little rosemary trees are my favorite part! Really, this cake would look just as pretty with just a rosemary tree forest and no house at all. Maybe an idea for a cake next year.

This Gingerbread Cake is honestly one of the best things I’ve ever had. It tastes like a Starbucks gingerbread loaf, but a million times better.

The tangy cream cheese frosting pairs so well with the sweet spice cake. A perfect cake for your holiday celebrations!

Tips for this Gingerbread Cake:

Dec 15, 2019 – Recipe revised to make taller layers. The layers should bake up to be 2″ tall in three 6″ cake pans.

– Recipe revised to make taller layers. The layers should bake up to be 2″ tall in three 6″ cake pans. The recipe as-is will also work in two 8″ pans. For three 8″ pans, 1.5x the recipe.

To make cupcakes, all you need to do is reduce the baking time — start checking at 15mins or so.

This recipe uses fancy molasses, which is a lighter, sweeter molasses. Do NOT use blackstrap molasses . If that’s all you can find, use half blackstrap and half golden syrup.

. If that’s all you can find, use half blackstrap and half golden syrup. If you have gingerbread spice mix you can use 3 3/4 tsps of that instead of the spices in the cake batter.

If you plan to make gingerbread houses as decoration, learn from my mistakes and let them set properly between stages.

Learn how to keep your cakes moist using Simple Syrup.

To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, see my tips here.

Originally published Nov 27th, 2016