Traditional gingerbread houses can take forever to make and lining up gingerbread walls is tricky. Using cake and buttercream is less fiddly and spoiler alert: it’s delicious to eat at the end!

Christmas cake with a difference. I’ve embraced the cut out technique using an actual gingerbread man cutter. Feel free to use one large gingerbread man or, depending on the size of your cake ...

Bake the gingerbread for 7–8 minutes ... Pipe a generous amount of icing along the wall edges and join the house together on the iced cake board (a second pair of hands really helps here).