It’s the holiday season, which means it’s the kick-off to building the traditional gingerbread houses for many families. I used to do this all the time as a kid growing up in the Midwest — it was just a normal part of the season.
I haven’t really kept up the tradition as an adult, though. This year, I decided to give it another go for the first time in ages, but while I’m still making a holiday house out of food, it’s not going to be made of gingerbread.
Enter Cheez-It’s new Cheez-It Build It Yourself Holiday House Kit. Yep, you read that right. It’s a holiday kit to make a house made of Cheez-Its. When a friend posted this on his Facebook page, I felt compelled to try it.
Courtesy of Cheez-It
I had no idea what was in store at the time.
The kit was harder to find than I expected
I ordered one from Walmart online. It was supposed to cost under $16 for a single pack before shipping, but by the time I checked out, it came to about $35 — Walmart resellers had already snatched them up and driven the price up. About a week later, the kit finally arrived.
When I opened the box, I found two snack-sized packets of Cheez-Its, a bag of frosting, some candy bits in the shapes of holiday items (a gingerbread-looking person, a round dot, and candy canes), and a sealed platform with some orange cookie house parts.
There were a total of five separate types of pieces inside. It was unclear if the white bag of frosting contained sugar or white cheddar cheese.
Building the house was easy
I recruited a friend to join in on the fun, and the first thing we did was flip the kit over to see if there were any instructions. There was a QR code that linked to a short video, so we watched that before getting started. It walked us through the assembly and showed a few examples from other people’s kits — most of them looked like more traditional cookie houses. With some guidance and a bit of inspiration, we were finally ready for the real fun to begin.
I opened the platform that came with the orange cookies. The box said they were cheese-flavored, and while I wasn’t ready to taste anything yet, I was curious — so I gave one of the house pieces a sniff. I can confirm it smelled exactly like cheese and cookies. A faint mix of cheddar and sugar cookie sweetness.
Courtesy of Cheez-It
The kit instructed me to massage the frosting packet before opening it, so I did. And once I squeezed some out, I realized it was just like the frosting in a regular holiday house kit — more like cake icing than anything resembling cheese.
The kit instructed us to use the frosting to put the orange cookie house together first. This was done by taking the frosting and connecting the house pieces together. There was a piece of the house that needed to be broken off to help the roof be put in place. That piece was used to make a chimney. I had to hold the roof together for a few minutes before the rest of the house could be created.
Courtesy of the author
After the house was put together, it was just a matter of adding the finishing touches with the decorations. This meant using the frosting to put Cheez-Its and the other candy bits onto the house.
We had leftovers after building the house
We started getting the hang of things at this point, and there seemed to be a lot more Cheez-Its than we needed. We could have probably used more candy bits.
Courtesy of the author
The finished house only used one pack of Cheez-Its. I had plenty of leftover frosting afterward, which I put on some Cheez-Its to taste. While the frosting (which was akin to cake-type frosting on a pastry strudel) was sweet, it didn’t taste incredibly weird paired with the Cheez-Its. It wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best, unlike the apple pie-flavored mac and cheese from Kraft I tried earlier this month, which was delicious.
Even though the whole thing felt a little ridiculous, I didn’t think it was the worst project I’d ever worked on. It still had most of the usual elements you’d find in a typical holiday house kit. It was basically the same process — just with Cheez-Its added into the decorating mix.
When you really think about it, Cheez-Its — strange as they may sound (and look) — aren’t all that outlandish. I’ve made gingerbread houses with pretzels before, and when you compare the salty crunch of the pretzels to the sweetness of the gingerbread, it’s not much different.
In the end, it was a fun activity to get my friends and me started on the festive season together.
