I make gingerbread houses out of gingerbread that I will actually enjoy eating. One of the joys of Gingerbread, the “real” kind, is that all of those spices really do help preserve the gingerbread. I make the houses just a few days before the holiday, so if they don’t sit around for weeks to be gawked at and go stale nevertheless.
And whenever possible (when I’m making it for myself or friends, and not necessarily with the help of a small person who demands the brightest candies), I decorate mine with dried fruit and nuts and minimal frosting, so that actually is something I would like to eat, and when I do them this way, and share them with other people, they will eat them. (Admittedly, the egg-white cement gets picked off most of the time....)
And though I use hard wheat for the flour when making construction ginger bread, I mostly make it fit for construction by baking it thick enough that it has some stability when cut and sat on the edge, but still has enough fat and leavening and sugar to be reasonably tender.
