This month, The Californian had its second annual gingerbread house competition, and it definitely topped last year’s contest for overall messiness.
The houses didn’t turn out too badly either. Here’s an account of the 40 minutes of purse madness and messiness from each team.

Team Magic Treehouse
Team Magic Treehouse was pretty confident entering The Californian’s 2nd Gingerbread House-Making Competition. There comes a certain amount of expectation with the title “Pro” as we intended to show our opponents who the real gingerbread house makers were.
Our team name was inspired by the iconic book series and we hoped to channel the same imagination and creativity into our very own treehouse masterpiece.
When searching for the perfect gingerbread house kit, we encountered many classic, yet simple options in Target’s catalog. Although any of those houses would’ve been easier to build than our ambitious treehouse, we went for the more challenging option, a risk that paid off when we discovered all the other teams had purchased the basic houses.
At the start of the competition, Team Magic Treehouse was mocked for choosing a seemingly unstable house. All the haters criticized the structural integrity of the kit and were sure our house would crumble at the hands of the dreaded shake test.
We started with designing and building the tree trunk portion of the kit, aiming for a strong base that would hold the house up against the future hardships it would face during the shake test. By securing the bottom of the tree to a cardboard sheet with generous amounts of frosting, we set ourselves up for good structural integrity that would guarantee survival during the so-called “natural disaster.”
Next, we focused on the actual house that would balance on top of our sturdy tree trunk. Because of the time it took to build our unique structure, we opted for a simple, yet eye-catching design. Our house was adorned with festive lights, gleaming windows and a classic holiday wreath.
In the end, the 40 minutes allotted to us wasn’t sufficient enough to complete everything we had envisioned. The lack of time updates throughout the competition caused the final countdown to catch us by surprise, but we were still confident in our magic treehouse.
Sadly, we were shattered to realize all our efforts and preparation were for naught when our house was disqualified for spending a brief few seconds adding sprinkles to the roof after time expired.
Even though we weren’t crowned the winners, our beloved house had both beauty and brains. It was a winner in our hearts (and in the competition, had it been FAIRLY and REASONABLY judged).

Team Zsyed Elite
We had the great opportunity to participate in this competition for the first time, and even though the outcome was rigged, we still won…in our hearts.
With this being the most competitive event we’ve entered, we gave it 100% and locked in. Our main game plan was to first decorate the house. We were going for the pretty and decorative aspect in the beginning. Meanwhile, the others seem to be focusing on making their house first, which obviously did NOT work out. With the limited amount of time we had, we had to be fast but precise.
First we separated the parts and then delegated each item to be decorated. Remember, this was our secret weapon. After a while we noticed the time running down to about 15-20 minutes, but we didn’t worry at all.
But time started to cut things close, so with only 10 minutes left we needed to start building the house since we had nothing constructed. We started to panic but couldn’t let that bring us down. With expertise, we put the house together in the last minutes, adding out final touches with our candy wolf and mushrooms, a glamorous walkway, and icicles of icing.
For some reason the judges didn’t seem to be impressed by our special guest, senior Mari Kawashima (Caleb’s girlfriend), who helped us build the house and ultimately got us disqualified.
Even with us being treated unfairly, we still prevailed and won in our hearts and minds. This is a lesson to never listen to the haters, and that you should always follow what you think you should do. We thought of getting Mari’s help, which is why we should’ve won.
– Zak Syed and Caleb Yi

Team Boom
As the winners of this competition, we felt it was only right if we wrote about how good of a job we did.
From our realistic design to our grit on and off the table, we were the clear winners. For the model of our house, we wanted to display a sense of modesty in a society full of greedy people.
Our fellow competitors shot for the stars, building grandiose properties, while ours was the model for every American citizen that doesn’t get a voice.
Who cares if it looked like a detached garage?
The competition was filled with stress for our opponents, but we remained calm and collected because we knew we were going to win. We are glad the judges acknowledged we had the best house and also the best message to our audience.
Our goal was to ultimately show our audience that even though we aren’t experienced in creating gingerbread houses, we still tried our best and got the job done in a unique way. We displayed that every winner and expert has always started off as a beginner at one point in time.
– KK DeMello and Carson Pfotenhauer

Team Wicked
This year at the gingerbread competition, we came back and better than ever. Based on events from last year, we were motivated to participate again.
While we reminisced about our experience with the Barbie kit last year, we decided to go the classic route this year and went for a gingerbread house kit from Target. But we also decided to get add icing charms, which included reindeer, Santa Claus, and Santa’ sleigh.
After a tremendous amount of inspection, we decorated the walls first. This seemed to help us a lot as we could decorate while the walls were flat. This made the details of our house more precise.
But when time started coming to a close, we finally began building the house.
This is when things took a turn. We got our four walls up and were beginning to build our roof when a certain team knocked a wall down. We were furious, but we did not let this stop us. We recovered and kept on going.
With less than five minutes left, we were adding our finishing touches when another tragedy struck. An event cameraman bumped into our table!
This caused our entire house to crumble. With no time left, our house was no longer a house. Instead, it was just a pile of gingerbread walls.
We tried to fix the house, but the host saw us touching our house after time was called and disqualified us. It was not our fault our house fell before the shake test.
As judges came around, all of them criticized our house for something that was not our fault. Yes, our house may not have passed the shake test (or even stood), but we believe strongly that those points would have been made up by the aesthetic and creative judges giving us points.
In the end, we felt cheated and disappointed. And let’s be honest, the only reason a team of cheaters won was because everybody else was disqualified.
On the bright side, all of the teams got to eat candy and gingerbread from our house.
– Anvi Kataria and Mansi Swaminathan
For photos and video from the event, visit The Californian’s Instagram @thecalifornianpaper.