UPDATED: Jack Skellington Nightmare Before Christmas Gingerbread House

This post was originally released last year, but because it was also being run simultaneously on another site, I was unable to share the actual gingerbread recipe and complete directions…but now, here is the entire thing in all its glory along with the FULL tutorial below and FULL TEMPLATES!!!

Because this is traditionally a Christmas project, I decided to do my take on Jack Skellington’s house at the end of the film when Santa makes it snow in Halloweentown.  Of course, the first thing I needed to do was find some good reference photos.

Luckily for me, Nightmare Before Christmas has only gotten MORE popular in the 25 years since it was released (crazy, right?!? 25 years!?) and there are lots of incredible products out there dedicated to serious NBC collectors (like myself) including this amazing replica of Jack’s house (hint, hint Secret Santa!)

DAY 1

I found multiple photos online that gave me a pretty good 365 view of his house.  Armed with my photos and some cardboard, I started making a rough mockup.  This way I’d have the measurements all done beforehand and could use the mockup as templates for my actual gingerbread.

The mockup wasn’t pretty, but it was enough to get me started.

Mockup done and templates made, it was time to start making the actual gingerbread.

DAY 2

If you’re planning on following along and making your own version of this project, you’ll need:

• 1 ½ cup margarine
• 1 ½ cup sugar
• 2 cups molasses
• 2 tablespoons black food coloring
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cloves
• 2 eggs
• 7 cups flour
• 1 ice cream cone sugar cone

You’ll also need:

• Mixer
• Large bowl
• Spoon
• Rolling pin
• Roller guides (I used two pieces of long wood about 1/4” thick)
• Jack’s house template (download it from the file above)
• Sharp knife
• Popsicle stick
• Toothpick
• Tinfoil
• Wine cork
• Multiple cookie sheets (at least 2 – I ended up using 4)
• Spatula
• Cooling rack

The first thing I did was pre-heat my oven to 350F/176C.

In my mixer, using the paddle attachment, I combined my margarine, sugar, molasses, food coloring and eggs.

(Pro-tip: According to people who make gingerbread houses professionally and in competitions, margarine is a far superior ingredient over butter. For whatever reason, it makes the gingerbread perfect for building. And since we’re not going to be eating it…substituting out the butter isn’t an issue.)

In a separate bowl, I combined the rest of my dry ingredients.

When combining, I sifted my dry ingredients into the wet ingredients to help reduce the likelihood of lumps.  Make sure you do this step slowly…you don’t want the flour to blow all over the kitchen.

I then continued to mix it all until I ended up with a thick, dark and heavy dough. Because I wanted the dough to be darker than traditional gingerbread, I also added in a few healthy slugs of black food coloring to really bring down the color.

I then turned this dough out onto a well-floured surface…

…and kneaded for about 2-3 minutes or until it was silky smooth.

Using my guides, I rolled the dough out into sheets approximately 1/8” thick.

I then put my template pieces out on my dough and used a sharp knife to cut out all my house pieces.

Don’t forget to cut out your windows!

To help sell the idea that these panels are wood, I used a popsicle stick and a toothpick to score horizontal “planks” into the soft dough.

I then transferred the cut-out pieces to silicone mat lined baking sheets and baked them for approximately 10-18 minutes.  If you’re following along, make sure to keep an eye on your pieces as there are so many different sizes and require different baking times.  The smaller the pieces (the turret tower windows for example) take about 10 minutes to cook while the larger pieces including the sidewalls and large roof pieces take a full 18 minutes. 

When you first pull your pieces out of the oven after baking, you should notice they are still a little soft and possibly a little warped. To help flatten them, I placed my pieces onto the counter and then put a cool cookie sheet on them for about ten minutes. After that, I transferred the pieces to a cooling rack and allowed them to cool completely.

To make the base “tubes” of my tower, I simply wrapped a wine cork in some tin foil and then wrapped that in gingerbread dough and baked it.  Once baked, the dough slid easily off of the tin foil, leaving me with a perfect gingerbread tube.  You’ll need two of these.

To help keep myself on track and make sure I had cut out enough of each of the pieces, I made sure to stack my finished pieces together with the templates. Which reminds me…as you can see from the photo, Jack has his hand on the cone we’re going to use for the top of our tower.  Save yourself hours of frustration and just grab a pre-made ice cream cone.  I had a chocolate flavored one left over from another project and it was not only the right size but the perfect color as well.

Once I was done with all the baking and flattening of my pieces, I carefully transferred them to an open-topped box and allowed them to rest for an entire 12 hours in a cool pantry.  This helps to ensure that the pieces were completely dry and firm and ready for assembly.

DAY 3

Now that all my pieces have been baked and cooled, it’s time to start assembling the final house.

For this you will need:

• 1 cup sugar
• ¼ cup water
• ¼ cup light corn syrup
• Yellow food coloring

You’ll also need

• Large pot
• Candy thermometer
• Spoon
• Tinfoil
• Popsicle sticks
• Sandpaper
• Toothpicks
• Dremel
• Scissors
• Cardboard sucker sticks
• Battery-powered LED lights

Before we start officially assembling our house, we’re going to want to pour the ‘glass’ that will go into our windows.  We’ll make our glass using a simple sugar glass recipe.

In a pot over medium-high heat, I combined my sugar, water, and light corn syrup. 

Stir until the sugar is dissolved and then stop stirring.  Pop in a candy thermometer and let it cook until it reaches approximately 300F/148C.

Immediately remove it from the heat and add in a few drops of yellow food coloring.  The syrup will foam up a bit…just let it bubble for a moment and then it will slow down. 

I placed my pieces of gingerbread that need “glass” down on top of tin foil.  I also draped a few extra pieces of tin foil over any areas of gingerbread where I might accidentally drip hot sugar glass as I’m filling the window spaces to prevent it from sticking to the gingerbread. 

Using a spoon, I carefully spooned in enough molten sugar glass to fill up the windows.  If you’re following along, you’ll want to move fairly quickly as the glass will start to harden within minutes.

I set these pieces aside to give the sugar glass a chance to harden.

Pro tip:  If you find that you’ve gotten fingerprints on your ‘glass’ or have bubbles, a quick blast from a small propane torch will quickly smooth those out. Just be careful and don’t overdo it. You run the risk of burning your gingerbread and your sugar!

At this point, I still have quite a bit of sugar glass material left in my pot. I returned it to the stove and turned the heat up to medium.  As it warms up, the sugar will re-melt and become liquid again.  I’ll be using this as the glue to assemble the house which means I’ll be keeping it on the stove and warm for as long as it takes.  As it continues to cook, it’ll darken down until it’s essentially the same color as our gingerbread and will blend in nicely.

To begin the assembly of the house, I started with the back wall and the two side pieces.  I test fit my pieces to make sure they fit together correctly.  Although we used a template, it’s entirely natural for the pieces to change slightly during baking and cooling.  To help even up those edges, I used sandpaper and my Dremel.  (Side note, gingerbread dust went EVERWHERE.  If you do this, make sure you sand in a well-ventilated area…like outside.)

To stick my pieces together, I simply dipped the edges into my liquid sugar glue and quickly pressed the pieces together. 

For these steps I had to move FAST!  Like I said earlier, this stuff will harden quickly so having the pot right next to where you’re working is critical. Of course, if you find that you’ve put something down and you aren’t quite happy with how it’s sitting, another quick blast of your propane torch will soften your sugar glue enough that you should be able to make minor adjustments.

Once I got my pieces assembled, I went over all the seams again with a hefty coating of sugar glue on the INSIDE of the piece.  This helps give the structure extra strength.  Remember, we’re only going to see the outside, so it doesn’t matter if the inside’s a bit ugly.

I continued sanding, gluing and sticking my pieces together, working from the bottom up.

By now I was essentially down with the “primary house” construction and was left with attaching the upper porch area, the support columns, and the crooked tower. 

This is also the point in the project where I had to decide if I wanted the gingerbread house to light up.  (Spoiler: hell YES!)

Because I wanted mine to glow from the inside out, this meant making sure that I had a hole drilled between the wall of my primary house and the front pop out.  Do this before you glue the pop out in place as it’s much easier to do now than after it’s been attached.

Speaking of attaching the front pop-out…although all our pieces are straight and we’ve double-checked our angles and sanded off any weird little quirks, keep in mind that this is Jack Skellington’s house and is quirky and a little off-kilter simply by virtue of being a Tim Burton creation.  That means I intentionally gave my house a bit of a tilt while constructing it, including the second level pop out. This was an aesthetic decision and you can certainly make yours as straight or as crooked as you wish.

Now that my pop out porches were attached, I needed to add in the support posts. To make the posts that hold up the porch, I first measured how long I neede my cardboard sucker sticks to be.  I cut them down to size and then dipped them into the sugar glue, coating them completely.  While the sugar glue was still soft but not scalding hot, I rolled it between the palms of my hands to help smooth it all down.  I used a dab of sugar glue on both ends to secure them to the upper and lower porch area.

Finally, it was time to build the crooked tower and attach it to the house.  To make the rounded top piece, I glued the tower window panels together into a circular shape.

Because this piece is so complicated and has so many parts, I followed up gluing it together with a blast from my torch to clean up extra sugar glue drips and fingerprints as well as soften the glue connection points enough to allow me to adjust the angles of the pieces until they were as close to perfectly circular as I could get them. 

I then used another healthy amount of sugar glue to glue together the two support tubes. To give it a crooked tilted look, I attached the tubes together at odd angles, using my sandpaper to first sand them down before gluing them together. I then used more sugar glue to attach them to the bottom of my circular glass tower piece.

Before I attached my tower to the house, I needed to determine where I wanted the tower to sit on the roof.  Here’s where personal preference again comes into play.  Depending on what model you look at and what photos you find, there are versions out there with the tower on the side of the house and others that have it sticking out the back.  I chose to put it on the side of my house for both aesthetics and because based on how my house is constructed, it made sense for balance.  Don’t want this gingerbread monstrosity tipping over on me!

Decision made, I used my Dremel to cut out a hole just smaller than the inner diameter of my tower.  This is where I would thread lights through later to make it glow as well.

I carefully attached my tower and then very carefully added the sugar cone on top for the peak.

Congratulations!  Primary construction is now done!

Before I packed it in for the night, however, it was time to test out the lights and make sure I’d done everything I wanted to as far as sealing the seams from the inside with sugar glue.  The easiest way to check for structural integrity was to put my house on its back, ram some lights up the tailpipe, and fire it up.

I did this by carefully laying the house down and test fitting the lights. You want to make sure you can see the glow from all the windows. This is also a great way to quickly spot check for any light leaks in wall seals.

Anywhere the light came through that it wasn’t supposed to, I slapped on some more sugar glue.

• 

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Again, I let my house rest for about 8 to 12 hours before moving onto the next step.  This gave all my sugar glue a chance to really get rock hard.

DAY 4

At this point, I still have several unused pieces of gingerbread left over including the piece labeled “wreath” and six squares of gingerbread with holes punched out of the center of them labeled “base.”  I set them aside for the time being. We’ll be using them later.

Finally, it was time to start working on the aesthetics of Jacks’ house, starting with painting it. Brace yourself…if you’re following along with this tutorial, this is the part where it gets intense.  Either be prepared for it to span two days or set aside a good 12-14 hours of a day to focus on this.   

For this part of the project you will need:

• White food coloring
• Black food coloring
• Brown food coloring
• Blue food coloring
• Vodka in a spray bottle
• Gum paste (I used Wilton’s and love it!)
• Dab and Hold Edible adhesive (again, Wiltons!)
• 5 cups white sugar (divided)
• 4 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• Black cookie icing
• Colored candy bits
• Orange colored Airheads candy
• White-colored Airheads candy
• Red-colored Airheads candy
• Green food coloring
• Orange candy melt chocolates
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup + 2 Tablespoons (divided)
• Cocoa powder
• ¼ cup water
• Silver spray glitter (Wilton’s…seriously, the best)

You’ll also need:

• Food safe paint brushes
• Mixer
• Rolling pin
• Popsicle sticks
• Sharp knife
• 12X12 board
• Wood screw
• 12” Wooden dowel
• Pastry bags (2)
• Scissors
• Black thread
• Silicone baking mat or wax paper
• Grass or star tip for pastry bag
• Exacto knife
• 2-part food safe silicone putty
• Small bat ring

To give my house a grey dilapidated look like the one seen on Jack’s house, I loosely blended a few drops of white food coloring with a small amount of black, an even smaller amount of brown and the tiniest drop of blue.  Don’t over mix!  You want the colors to be somewhat separate so when you brush them on with your brush you get little streaks of the individual colors.

I followed that up with a light spritz of vodka and another swipe with a dry brush to mimic the texture of wood.

Don’t worry if your strokes are uneven or if the color goes on thicker in some spots than others or you see a bit of gingerbread shining through.  This just adds to the overall look of the piece being old and worn.

While I was painting my house, I also gave my six base pieces a good coat of grey as well and then set them aside for now.

Don’t worry about painting the roof or the top of the tower as we’ll be tiling over that, but make sure you paint everything else.

While that’s drying, I made the gum paste I would be using for the roof tiles as well as other finishing details.  For this project, I purchased a pre-made mix from Wilton and it was so easy that I have to say, if you can find it…use it! Follow the directions on the box and add in a few drops of black food coloring to make a dark gray color.

I rolled my tile dough out until it was just under 1/8” thick (popsicle sticks are the perfect thickness if you want to use them as guides.) Speaking of popsicle sticks, they’re also the perfect width for our tiles.  I used them to help me cut out long strips of the gum paste dough.

I cut my tiles so they were approximately ½” long and round at one end slightly.  This will be the part of the tile we see.

To attach the tiles to the roof, I gave it a generous brushing of edible adhesive and then just started sticking the tiles on.

While it might be tempting to use our sugar glue for this step, let me stop you right now and say don’t.  The heat from the sugar glue will melt the tiles and you’ll be left with a goopy mess.  Stick with the Dab-n-hold.  It works perfectly. 

Like I was saying, give your roof a generous wash of this stuff and then start laying your tile down, starting at the bottom and working your way up.  Offset each subsequent row over the row below it to give it a realistic staggered look. 

Again, if you’re following along, do this while your gum paste is still soft.  Gum paste dries really quickly so work in batches of 50 tiles or so at a time and store any unused paste at room temperature by wrapping it tightly in plastic wrap. You want your tiles to be soft enough to fit over the pieces beneath them.  Too dry and they’ll become brittle and crack.  Not only will it make working with them easier, but as you work with them, the softer tiles will develop natural texture that is just amazing. You won’t be able to really see it until we get to the dry brushing step but trust me…it’s there and it’s going to be amazing!

I continued working my way upward and repeated this process with all my roof pieces…except for the tower. 

To do the tower, I simply gave my tiles a bit of an angled cut at the top, creating a blunt tear shape. This allows them to fit closely together on the curved surface.

At this point, it was just a matter of continuing to make tiles and gluing them down. Eventually, you’ll get them all on. No, really. Keep going. You’re almost there. I swear.

Once all the tiles were attached, I gave them a light brush with a bit of black food coloring thinned down with vodka.  This helps to break up the uniform color and make them look more aged.  Also, when brushing, brush from the bottom up rather than top-down. This concentrates the color at the bottom of the tile where it would naturally occur due to exposure and runoff.

Closeup of dry brushed tiles.  Look at that amazing texture!  I told you it would be incredible! It looks like real wood!

Okay, our house is assembled, painted and tiled and we’ve done our first test run with the lights. Time to start really kicking up our decorating efforts!

To give our piece some stability as well as to provide the lights inside with support (so they don’t just slide down to the bottom of the house) I built a wooden platform for it to sit on.

To make your own base, find the center of your 12X12 board and attach your wooden dowel using your wood screw.

If this were a project we would be eating, I would suggest either wrapping the whole thing in foil or food wrap or even a food-safe resin spray, but because this is just for decoration, you can leave the wooden base bare.

To start doing the final decoration, I needed to make a ton of ‘cement.’ In my mixing bowl using my whisk attachment, I whisked 4 egg whites with the cream of tartar.  I slowly added my powdered sugar 1 cup at a time until it was all combined.  I then turned the mixer onto high and allowed it to whisk for 5 minutes.

I transferred all but about 4 tablespoons of this snowy white cement to one of my pastry bags (pop the extra 4 tablespoons worth into an airtight sealed container, we’ll use it in a bit.) and used that to apply a generous coating to one of the six bottom pieces of gingerbread I saved from earlier that have the holes in the middle (they should be painted grey by now…if not…do this before moving onto the next step!)

I then slid this piece (cement side down) over the top of the dowel in the center of my wooden base and stuck it to the top of the wooden support board.

I repeated this same step with the other 5 pieces, staggering them to create “stairs” and cementing them to each other using generous blops of my white gingerbread cement.

Once I got to my top piece, I slathered on a healthy dose of cement.  I then carefully wrapped my string of lights around the exposed part of the wooden dowel on my base and gently lowered my gingerbread house down onto the top piece of the stacked gingerbread base.  While the cement was still soft, I adjusted it until I was happy with the look of both the lights and the house on the base.

I set this aside to harden up and used the time to work on my edible decorative Christmas lights.

To make the lights, you’ll need your black cookie icing, your black thread and your colored candy bits.

I made the light wire by unspooling about 6 feet of black thread and folding it back on itself two times, finally ending up with a piece that was 1.5 feet long and made up of four strands. 

I twisted these together and then put them gently down on my silicone mat. I put a tiny dot of black cookie icing along the thread about every ¾” or so and then pressed one of the candy bits into the still wet black icing.

To make sure it was good and dry before putting it on the house, I let it dry for 2 hours.

To make the wreath, I took my reserved 4 tablespoons of gingerbread cement and mixed in green food coloring until it was a bright spruce green.

I transferred this to a piping bag with a star tip and covered the front and sides of my gingerbread wreath piece with green frosting. Make sure you leave the back bare.

While the frosting was still soft, I rolled tiny orange Christmas lights out of bits of the orange Airhead candy and pressed them into the frosting.  To give them tiny pupil dots, I dipping the back end of a toothpick into the same black cookie icing we used for our Christmas lights and placed a dot in the center of each light.

To make the holly berries, I simply rolled up tiny red balls of Airheads candy and pressed them into the still soft frosting.

To make the bow, I rolled out a strip of red Airhead candy and folded it back onto itself. This will be the top of the bow.  To create the ties of the bow, I then placed two long strips of red airhead candy under the top piece I made. I attached the whole thing to the wreath with a light brush of Dab-n-hold on the back of the bow.

To make the tiny skull, I used a small ball of white Airheads candy and cut teeth into it using an Exacto knife.  I carefully dabbed in a bit of black food coloring using a toothpick to highlight the nose and eyes.  I attached it to the Airheads bow using a small bit of Dab-n-hold adhesive.

to make sure the wreath was tough enough to withstand a bit of handling, I let it dry for approximately 2 hours. Finally, to finish it off, I used a bit more Dab-n-hold to add sharp teeth to the back using white Airhead candies rolled out flat and cut into shards.

On a separate piece of wax paper, I piped out additional bits of green frosting and allowed them to dry as well.  These will be used for garland later.

To make my porch pumpkins, I made some modeling chocolate. 

To make your own melt ¼ cup of orange candy melts until liquid-smooth.

Add in 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup and stir to combine.  At first, the candy melt and corn syrup will mix smoothly, but then you’ll notice the mixture getting thicker and thicker and harder to stir (Use either a wooden spoon or a stiff spatula to mix).

When the mixture comes together in a thick almost paste-like texture, pull out of the bowl and use your hands to knead together.

This part is VERY MESSY!  I strongly suggest doing this part over the sink.  As they mix, you’ll have a lot of liquid coming out of the dough… don’t worry, this is normal!  Just keep kneading.  Eventually, all the excess liquid will either drip off or be worked back into the dough and you’ll be left with a smooth clay-like final product.

Wrap your orange modeling chocolate ball in plastic wrap and stash in the fridge to firm up for about 30 minutes.

Once your modeling chocolate has had a chance to rest, we can make our pumpkins. To make my pumpkins I divided my orange modeling chocolate in half and rolled two balls of slightly varying size (one larger and one smaller).

I then used the blunt side of a knife to press in lines vertically all around the pumpkins to mimic the natural pumpkin lines.

I then used an Exacto knife to carve my pumpkin’s faces.

Once I was happy with their faces, I highlighted them by filling them in with black food coloring thinned with a bit of vodka.

To age my pumpkins I gave them a light dusting of cocoa powder and then went over that with a wash of brown food coloring thinned with more vodka.

Finally, I went over them again one more time with a brush lightly moistened with vodka to accentuate the natural lines and to soften all the hard edges. I then gave these freshly “carved” pumpkins a bit of time to allow the vodka to evaporate and the paint to dry. 

To create the stem, mix a tiny bit of brown food coloring into a pinch of sugar paste and attach with a drop of Dab-n-hold.

To make a Sandy Claws hat for one of my pumpkins, I rolled out a piece of red Airheads candy and cut out a circle about 2” across.  I then cut this in half and rolled the half-circle in on itself to create a cone.  I smoothed the edge with a bit of vodka and then attached using a bit of Dab-n-hold.  To create the white “fluff” and pom-pom, I use tiny blips of our white gingerbread cement.

To make the three antenna shapes on the top and side of the crooked tower and top of the house, I rolled out several thin gum paste ‘snakes’ approximately 1 ½ inches long.  For the first one, I bent one into a 45° angle and set it aside to dry.  For the second one, I created another piece with a 45° bend and then attached a second smaller piece a little ways above the bend in a sort of lowercase ‘t’ shape.

For the third piece, I rolled out one last piece of thin gum paste snake about 3/4” long and then attached a second, horseshoe-shaped piece, again about halfway down.

Pieces 1 and 2 will go on the upper side of our crooked tower and piece 3 goes in the front of the house at the top of the peak.

I let these pieces dry for approximately 30 minutes or so while I worked on the bat for the top of our tower.  If you’re feeling artistic, simply sculpt a small bat out of grey sugar paste and allow to dry.  I chose to mold a cute bat ring I’d gotten at Halloween for this step because at this point in the game, I was 4 days and almost 30 hours into this project and ready to cut a corner or two. Deal with it.

Knead together your two-part putty and press your bat into it. 

Allow it to set up for about 15 minutes and then remove your bat ring. 

Give it a quick rinse and then mash in a bit of grey gum paste and allow that to dry for about 20 minutes.

Gently pop it out and use your Exacto knife to trim away any excess.

By now you should have:

• Your finished house on top of the base.
• Your wreath
• 2 pumpkins
• A string of Christmas lights
• 3 antenna pieces
• A little sugar paste bat
• A ton of white gingerbread cement left over in the pastry bag.

Time to make it snow! I filled a pastry bag full of the white gingerbread cement and started blopping on generous blops (yes, blop is a technical term) to the peak of the house, the top of the tower, and the front of the porch. When doing this, it’s up to you where your snow lands. It’s wherever you think snow would naturally settle.

Continue adding snow until you’re happy with how it looks. This includes all around the base and on your steps. Pile it up!

Use a bit of your gingerbread cement to attach the antenna to the side of your tower and to the top of the peak of the roof on your house.

Now let’s add some icicles!

Go ahead and make another batch of sugar glue, but this time don’t add any color to it and pull it off the stove as soon as it hits 290F/143C.  The temperature will continue to rise to 300F just before it starts to cool but this way it stays clear and doesn’t get the light gold color it will start to develop right when it hits 300F/148C.

Allow your pot of hot sugar to cool to the point where a popsicle stick dipped in and pulled out will leave a trail of thick gooey sugar a bit slower and thicker than cold honey.

Carefully (it’s still hot!) scoop up bits of this thick liquid sugar on your popsicle stick and allow to drip off onto the corners of your house and along the edges of windows and your tower.

As it drips, it’ll harden into long strands that look like icicles! Continue adding icicles anywhere you think they would naturally occur.

To attach your Christmas lights, place a small dot of your Dab-n-hold on the top of your tower and then stick the first light in your string to the dot.  Hold it in place for about 2 minutes or until it sticks.  Then just wind the rest of the string down the tower and secure at the bottom using more Dab-n-hold.

Attach your bat at the top of the tower peak using a bit of gingerbread cement and give him a light ‘dusting’ of gingerbread cement snow.

Use more gingerbread cement to stick your wreath to the front of your house and a bit of Dab-n-hold along the edge of the roof to attach the bits we piped out to create the garland “arms” of our wreath.

Use more gingerbread cement to secure one of your pumpkins to the front porch.

Create a pile of snow at the base of your stairs and tuck in your second pumpkin.

Finally, to give everything that frosty, glittery icy look, hit all your still soft gingerbread cement snow with a light dusting of silver spray glitter. 

If you have areas where your snow has dried, simply give it a light spritz of vodka and then a spritz of silver glitter.

And that’s it! Congratulations, you’ve just survived making a full Jack Skellington’s Christmas gingerbread house!

Turn on your LED lights, step back, and admire the absolutely gorgeous piece of edible artwork you just slaved over!

I mean, really…look at this thing…

It’s freaking gorgeous.

And with the exception of the LED lights, the wooden base, and the dowel holding the lights…it’s 100% edible…

Not that I’m letting anybody actually eat this thing.

Nope.  I’m shellacking this thing and holding onto it forever.

Literally forever, as in it’s going to be included in my will.  Someone’s gonna get this thing when I pass on.

And for anyone wondering how big it is, the final size is roughly 1.75 Chihuahuas.

Merry Christmas!

For more Nightmare Before Christmas fun, why not check out these fun reicpes:

Oogie Boogie Meringue Cupcakes

Jack Skellington Grilled Cheese