Review: Ikea Gingerbread House

Something unusual for Christmas! While browsing Ikea a few weeks ago, I stumbled across a massive pile of gingerbread house kits, reasonably priced and looking very much like they might be in scale with Flintloque figures! I quickly snapped one up, but it is only today that I got to assemble it.

As with most Ikea products, the house is flat-pack, coming with nothing more than the required components and a small instruction leaflet to guide you in assembling it!

Laying out the pieces, you can see it is quite minimalist. 4 wall sections, two roof pieces and 4 small bits for a chimney. They are all quite thin and fragile looking, but I didn't find that caused any problems during assembly.

Unfolding the instruction sheet, it was clear that it was 'written' in the same style as all their products, with simple pictures to guide you like a Lego set. The back, however, helpfully includes instructions about making suitable icing for 'gluing' the building together.

I put my workspace in order, like any good wargamer, and collected together  the required elements of the 'glue'. Icing sugar, an egg (white only) and a dash of lemon juice.

Not being much of a chef myself, I was slightly concerned at the massive amount of icing sugar relative to the quantity of liquid from a single egg white and 5ml of lemon juice, but I needn't have worried. The mixture came together nicely to form a shiny, thick, sticky mass in the bowl!

Not having anything for piping, I started off by using a sandwich bag with the corner cut off. Unfortunately I cut it a bit too large, so the actual gluing step turned into a hideous mess! After the structure was completed, I transferred the rest to a cone made from baking paper, and this was much better for decorating the roof. I had also bought four coloured tubes of pre-made icing and used these to dot the roof for some extra colour.

As you can see below, the final house works well with the figures I painted in my last post. It will form the center piece for my Christmas game. However, I probably won't get a chance to play until after Christmas. I hope I don't eat the house before that happens!

So all in all I recommend this item to whimsical wargamers everywhere, although you may need to wait until next November before Ikea has them in stock again.

Finally, I'd like to wish my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope you all had a successful 2013 and that 2014 will hold much in the way of fun and games for you!