10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

From an edible White House to a life-size kids' playhouse, these gingerbread masterpieces put our DIY attempts to shame
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10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

Not to scale: the first dog, Bo.
(Credit: Eddie GehmanKohan)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

We're wondering how many bird balls it would take to knock this one down.
(Credit: ShaneParker)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

Complete with gingerbread Quasimodo.
(Credit: Paula E. Kirman)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

A win for the environmental lobby, in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton.
(Credit: The Ritz-Carlton, Charlotte)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

We're guessing that steer skull is not edible. (Or is it marzipan?)
(Credit: The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

This artist really nailed the Smithsonian Headquarters' faux-Norman-style architecture.
(Credit: Four Seasons Hotel Washington, D.C.)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

A life-size playhouse you can nibble. What more could a child want?
(Credit: luxurylaunches.com)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

If global warming persists and the ocean does, indeed, swallow the land, we know who to call.
(Credit: The Grove Park Inn)

10 Extreme Gingerbread Houses

If you attached a million balloons to this house, it would probably float.
(Credit: Greg Thompson)

Empire State Building

The way this iconic building's gingerbread rendering is leaning a little too much to the right makes us New Yorkers uncomfortable.
(Credit: Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley)

Gingerbread house: the term calls to mind a quaint little brown cottage, decorated to a T with precisely piped icing, delicately spun sugar, and vibrantly colored gum drops. But more often than not, the DIY Christmas tradition produces precarious confections, bursting at the seams with frosting and misplaced candies, making them look more like gingerbread crackhouses. So we'll leaving construction to the pros. And boy have they been at work, building EXTREME structures. (Edible Notre Dame Cathedral? Check. Chocolate-coated White House? Check.) Check out our favorite wacky gingerbread houses in the slideshow above, and we'll stick to decorating sugar cookies, thankyouverymuch.

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