We love looking at Nordic Ware's yearly holiday parade of fancy cake pans, but we don't usually think they're very practical. This year's pan, though, is different. It's not only practical, it's practically cheaterly in its potential to overcome your gingerbread house challenges forever.
This pan creates a very cozy holiday cottage, and since you can make it out of gingerbread cake or spice cake, it could replace those fussy, not very tasty gingerbread houses glued together with stiff icing. You can still let your kids indulge their love of bright candy decorations, though; just stick them on with icing (and peel them off later when you want to eat it!).
What do you think? Cheaterly? Too easy? Just right? Would a cake pan ever replace old-fashioned gingerbread house construction?
• Find it: Gingerbread House Bundt® Cake Pan, $34 at Williams-Sonoma
Related: Gingerbread Houses: The Apartment Therapy Versions
(Images: Williams-Sonoma)
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Cheat!!!
Ok... it would be cute as a cake for a Christmas party or something, but a gingerbread house it's not. If you want gingerbread, make the house right. If you want cake, make a real cake.
Many have said this on here before but I'm really over the novelty pans with one use Williams Sonoma seems to be trying to corner the market on.
I love it!!
I have always preferred gingerbread cake to gingerbread. However, this looks like it would be a pain in the butt to get out cleanly. I'll stick with normal pans and cut my cake into squares, thanks!
Although I agree that William Sonoma is known for single-day/holiday pans...is that necessarily a bad thing? Every year for Easter my father would make a lamb cake using a mold. This was back in the 1980's. I'd love to start a tradition involving this sort of thing. It could become the centerpiece for the Christmas table and my niece would love to help decorate it. Sure, I would still probably do a gingerbread house - but that would be for a month-long display while this pan/gingerbread cake this would be for consumption.
Unitaskers that only get used once a year don't fit in most regular-sized kitchens or budgets.
Also, I thought the charm of a gingerbread house what the making process... otherwise, you could always buy a plastic/wood/whatever one and bring it out with the rest of your holiday decor...
It's adorable! And some of us just do not have the time to make gingerbread houses. I could see a table with a whole line of these like a village street, each one decorated differently...
Love that this one-time-use pan is called 'practical.'
And I don't mean to sound snarky, I have no issue with people who choose to buy these sorts of things, they're fun, why not, right? But practical? Nah
Excellent curb appeal!
Two-time use :) ...you could also bake a cake in it and give it as a housewarming gift! Your friends would think you're so clever. Although I agree that having lots of specific pans isn't practical...they're way too much fun to totally ignore.
WANT IT.
For anyone who's spent dozens of hours/pans/pins etc on a gingerbread house (especially here in the southern hemisphere where stuff melts before you can get it to stick) this would be just PERFECT!
I think that might be the most creative use for the Nordic Ware ok;...