Creating an edible Gingerbread Village

You all know that we love gingerbread and gingerbread houses. For us, it’s not just a Christmas thing – we love them all year round. In December we baked our first gingerbread house which only lasted a few days. So I bought a Gingerbread Village kit from Morrisons for us all to do over Christmas.

Gingerbread Village from Morrisons

We don’t have a Morrisons near us but when I popped into one I found they had some lovely products for Christmas. This year I could’t resist their Gingerbread Village. It consisted of 5 gingerbread house shapes with pre-made icing, jelly hearts, pucker ups and mini bead sweets. We couldn’t help but gather some of our own supplies too!

I thought this would make a fun gingerbread activity. Both the children love decorating a gingerbread house but this kit meant they could each make at least one of their own.

The first step was to knead the icing pouch for a minute to a soft smooth consistency. We also had to separate the 5 mini village houses into individual panels by gently breaking along the snap lines between sections. Inside the box was a cardboard tray which we used as a base for setting up our mini village.

Then it was time to get started. First we put each little building together using the icing. I liked the fact each building was different.

Then the children each chose two and started decorating them with the white icing and sweets. They both did it their own way.

There was a lot of concentration so this was a pretty good activity for Christmas Eve. We all enjoyed a loaded hot chocolate whilst we built the gingerbread village.

I have to admit that we’re not planning on eating this gingerbread village. The gingerbread itself is quite thick and pale and doesn’t look nearly as appetising as homemade gingerbread. My 6 year old has already asked if we can make some porg gingerbread biscuits so I think we will be whipping up some of those soon.