Trader Joe’s Gingerbread House Kit

Store-bought gingerbread house kits have always been something the younger family members in my house enjoy. We’ve tried a few different kits from Aldi over the years, including traditional kits and pre-built house kits. One year we even bought a gingerbread train kit.

This year, I decided to change things up a bit and buy a gingerbread house kit from Aldi’s cousin, Trader Joe’s. The unique triangle-shaped packaging caught my attention, and the A-frame house looked like it might be a fun change from the more boxy house kits my family has previously built.

Another thing that caught my eye about the TJ’s house: it comes with adorable little edible woodland animals including a fox, deer, owl, and squirrel. I couldn’t resist.

Trader Joe’s Gingerbread House Kit $8.99 for a 26.4-ounce kit in 2024. That’s around 34 cents per ounce.

This is a product of Germany.

If you’re looking out for allergens the kit contains milk, soy, wheat, and coconut. It may contain traces of egg, peanut, and almond.

The kit contains the following:

• gingerbread house pieces
• icing base (it makes royal icing)
• woodland creatures
• fruit flavored gummy candy
• chocolate buttons
• nonpareils (sprinkles)
• a pastry bag

The box has nutrition information, but I don’t know of many people who actually eat an entire gingerbread house kit like this, since the gingerbread pieces are baked so hard that they’re not all that good to eat. In my house, we typically pluck some of the tastier candy pieces off the house and eat them but eventually throw away the house.

If you really want to eat the house, one serving is 1/25th of the house, which will net you 110 calories, 2 grams of total fat (3% DV), no saturated fat or sodium, 27 grams of total carbohydrates (10% DV), less than 1 gram of dietary fiber (2% DV), 20 grams of total sugars, 17 grams of added sugars (34% DV), and 1 gram of protein.

How to Build the House:

The back of the box notes that the kit is not complete and will also require the equivalent of one egg white plus some lemon juice or white vinegar. Those things are for the royal icing, and they are not included.

The box says pasteurized liquid egg white is recommended for safety when you make the icing. If you’re the type who likes to nibble candy pieces off the finished house after it’s sat out at room temperature for a while, I think the high sugar content in the icing acts as a preservative, likely making it safe to eat even though it contains egg.

The box has directions for making the icing. Whip the egg white (not included) until it begins to stiffen, and stir in the included icing base. Add a few drops of lemon juice or white vinegar to make the icing stickier.

To construct the gingerbread house, the box says to fill the four gaps in the square foundation piece with icing, and insert the large A-shaped gingerbread pieces. Squeeze icing onto the edges of the A frames and attach the roof sections. Gently press down until the pieces are secure and the icing has slightly hardened. Allow the gingerbread house to dry for at least half an hour before further decorating.

Building Our House:

I bought a small carton of pasteurized Egg Beaters egg whites from a traditional grocery store for this project. I whipped them with my electric hand mixer for a few minutes until they got stiff, and then I stirred in half of the icing base from the box that’s included with the kit. (The directions are not clear on the kit box itself, but the icing box states to use 125 grams, which is half of the box.)

The instructions don’t say to use a mixer to mix in the icing base, so I stirred it in by hand. It was a little difficult to get all the lumps out, and that caused some problems later when I was piping icing onto the house and the bag’s opening occasionally got clogged by a lump.

I added a few drops of white vinegar to make the icing sticker. Despite the vinegar, this is still very sweet thanks to the sugar, so if you really want to eat it, you can, as long as you’ve used pasteurized egg whites. It tastes fine.

This made more than enough icing for us to assemble and decorate the house. It is a bit messy because you have to transfer the icing to the piping bag, and it tends to get everywhere.

I like that this house is not built on a cheap plastic base like other kits I’ve bought. You build the entire house on the gingerbread base piece, which you will need to build on your own plate or tray. I built our house on a decorative serving plate so it will look nice as a table centerpiece.

The house went together easily and we had no problems with it falling down. This A-frame house is a much sturdier architectural design compared to the square or rectangular house kits I’ve previously bought from other stores.

Our house had a moderate gap at the roof peak, but I probably could have avoided that if I’d pushed the roof pieces up more and reinforced them with additional icing.

The included decorations are cute, but we wish there were more. We felt like the kit had plenty of small multi-colored sprinkles, but not enough of the more fun decorations like chocolate buttons or gumdrops. While the fruit-shaped gummies look nice, there weren’t many of them, and my kids remarked that traditional uniformly shaped gumdrops look better if you’re wanting to line a roof peak or walkway.

This kit gets an A grade from us in terms of house construction and sturdiness, especially compared to other store-bought kits we’ve built. It’s probably a solid B when it comes to the quantity of decorations. The good news is that Trader Joe’s sells plenty of candy if you want to supplement this house kit.

The Verdict:

Trader Joe’s Gingerbread House Kit has some things going for it: it comes with cute woodland animal decorations, and it’s well designed so you won’t deal with house pieces falling down as the icing dries.

The downsides: the icing requires some assembly, and you’ll need additional ingredients including egg whites and white vinegar or lemon juice. Also, this didn’t have nearly enough candy decorations for our liking.

It’s a decent kit overall. Just know it takes some extra work to make the icing, and you might want to buy some extra candy to decorate it with.