If you want to keep a gingerbread house looking perfect throughout the holiday season, display it in a cool, dry place. Covering it at night with plastic wrap seals out moisture, dust, bugs, and other errant inedibles.

Royal icing is the edible “glue” or mortar that holds a gingerbread house together and can be used to make fancy sugar decorations. It’s the best option for projects like gingerbread houses since, unlike buttercream frosting, royal icing will harden once dry.

A store bought kit has pre-cut and baked gingerbread, but you will be limited by the design. Use a piece of foam board to act as a base for your house. Make a basic box shape and use glue or icing to hold it together.

How to store your gingerbread properly

1. Wrap your gingerbread in saran, plastic wrap or tin foil.
2. Place your gingerbread in a tin or air tight plastic container.
3. Mark your container with the current date and its contents.
4. Place in a refrigerator or freezer, all depending on when you will like to eat your gingerbread.

Gingerbread might just be a busy home cook’s new best friend. Tez Kemp says uncooked dough can be stored in the fridge for a week before cooking. “You can also freeze it,” he says. “You can make all the dough at once and then freeze the leftover for up to three months.” Easy.

You can help keep freshly baked gingerbread cake fresh a little longer by storing it in the fridge, but it is not recommended because it dries out much faster there. Gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses should be stored in a tightly closed container on the counter or in the pantry.

First, if you roll out the dough without refrigerating it, the dough will crack and what’s worse than the cracked dough is when you pull your cookies out of the oven only to find puffy, oversized, blob shapes that look nothing like the cute little cookie cutter shapes you cut out (via Delish).

You can keep a gingerbread house for years with proper storage. Our houses will stay fresh to eat for up to 12 months depending on how they are displayed and/or stored.

Some pieces cracked–this usually has more to do with the amount of flour in the dough and how thickly the dough was rolled. If the dough is too soft, you can get cracking. If you roll too thickly, you can get cracking.

Too much flour will make your cookies crumbly and dry. If your dough is too crumbly: mix in 1 tbsp of milk until the dough is soft and pliable again. Be sure to chill your dough for at least 3 hours. This will help the flavor of the dough and consistency so it doesn’t spread when baking.

As soon as the gingerbread is out of the oven, remove windows and doors, trim the pieces and then cool completely. Make the pieces as straight as possible for easier assembly. Use a royal icing recipe that holds up well and dries hard. If you double the recipe, expect it to take twice the time to make.

Gingerbread will keep for up to a month, but longer if kept in an airtight container. If displaying a house or any other bake, keep it out of direct sunlight and display in a cool, dry environment. It will keep for 2 weeks. You can also freeze gingerbread.

By far one of the most delicious holiday decorations, gingerbread houses attract the attention of guests and sugar-seeking bugs. How to Avoid a Humbug Christmas: Wrap the gingerbread house up at night and stick it in the fridge to keep from attracting insects.

As for storing dough, we recommend that you can make it and store the batter 2-3 days in the refrigerator, tightly covered. You can also freeze most drop and roll cookie batters for a few weeks. That should be enough to get you started, but let us know if you have other questions.

Gingerbread houses are perfectly edible, and absolutely delicious. You have to eat it, because it will mould and become less tasty over the days. That is, unless you’re participating in a contest, in which case eating the house would be ill-advised until you receive your prize!

Here are five delicious ways to use up the leftover gingerbread house.

1. Leftover Gingerbread House Truffles.
2. Gingerbread Ice Cream.
3. Gingerbread House Milkshakes.
4. Gingerbread House Pie Crust.
5. Gingerbread House Ice Cream.
6. Gingerbread Bark.
7. Gingerbread Ice-Cream Cake.

Gingerbread houses originated in Germany during the 16th century. The elaborate cookie-walled houses, decorated with foil in addition to gold leaf, became associated with Christmas tradition. 4,000 gingerbread bricks were used during its construction.

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What’s the Moral? The gingerbread man story’s moral is slightly dark for a fable meant for children: Be careful who you trust. The cookie believed the fox when he said he wasn’t tempted to eat him—this misguided trust led to the protagonist’s downfall.

The point of gingerbread houses is a way to waste an afternoon attempting to make something that vaguely resembles the picture on the box, whilst DC lick icing off their fingers, tshirts, tablecloths etc.

The Gingerbread Man, and the Story of his Christmas Adventures by Whitney Foard Small and Junho Kim. A wonderful children’s Christmas story of a lonely Gingerbread Man and his journey to find a home.

Pick a solid base for your gingerbread house – either a flat cookie sheet, or a thick, sturdy piece of cardboard. If you want, line the base with aluminum foil or wax paper. Mortar the sides of the house with royal icing: Pipe a thick line of icing along a short end of one of the side pieces.

The tradition of decorated gingerbread houses began in Germany in the early 1800s, supposedly popularised after the not-so-Christmassy fairytale of Hansel and Gretel was published in 1812. At around the same time, nuns in Sweden were baking gingerbread to ease indigestion.

Germany

According to Epicure & Culture, gingerbread was sacred, and the only time it was allowed to be made by the general public was during Christmas and Easter. So, that’s probably why it’s seen as a Christmas delicacy.

Modern Tannenbaum (Christmas trees) are traditionally decorated in secret with lights, tinsel and ornaments by parents and then lit and revealed on Christmas Eve with cookies, nuts and gifts under its branches.

The evergreen fir tree has traditionally been used to celebrate winter festivals (pagan and Christian) for thousands of years. Pagans used branches of it to decorate their homes during the winter solstice, as it made them think of the spring to come. Christians use it as a sign of everlasting life with God.