ottawa foodies

My nieces are coming to town for their first white Christmas and I'd like to put together a gingerbread house with them, decorated with icing, jujubes, Smarties, etc. Problem = I'm not much of a baker and don't see myself doing the structural work - ie. baking the gingerbread walls and roof.

Is there any place where I can buy pre-fab gingerbread components to assemble and decorate the house ourselves? I seem to recall seeing this offered somewhere but haven't a clue now that it's on my radar :)

Walmart and most grocery stores should have prefab kits that likely come with icing as well- though depending on how much decorating you intend on doing, you might also need a batch of royal icing. There are lots of recipes online or, I think, Bulk Barn may sell a powdered version that you can mix up.

I can't vouch for the quality of the gingerbread, but most of the fun is decorating anyway. The kits often include some candy as well, but you can always supplement this with candy of your choice.

Bulk Barn has gingerbread house kits and extra gingerbread "people" - at least they did last week.

Bulk Barn on Merivale had the prefab kits yesterday (Sunday)

IKEA - they also make really good dough for gingerbread men, I'd buy that is well if you can find it in stock. Have fun with this activity.

Thank you everyone but especially Flexie - I like Swedish gingberbread actually so this sounds like a good excuse to mix it up with the Christmas crowds at IKEA (not to mention picking up some caviar at the Russian store on Baxter Rd)

Haven't tried the Ikea gingerbread but any alternative to most/all of those pre-fab kits would be worth exploring if you care about the actual eating of the finished house. If it's all about the crafting then who cares. But the prefab kit ginger"bread" is hard and dry and cheap, the icing is bad and the candies are granite pebbles. Eating the prefab kit house is a brittle, dusty affair with tooth-cracking risk. My kids never finish it. I want to try building a house with softer walls, real icing and higher quality candy.

"Walmart and most grocery stores should have prefab kits that likely come with icing as well- though depending on how much decorating you intend on doing, you might also need a batch of royal icing."

Great tip! I would recommend the same as well.