Decorating festive biscuits is the perfect way to while away a wintry afternoon and there are plenty of kits if you need a little inspiration. We’ve picked our favourites on sale this Christmas, from classics like Hansel and Gretel gingerbread houses to those with a twist, such as a 3D green tea cacti kit. Bring on the rainy afternoons – we need an excuse to stay indoors and get stuck into this lot.

The Shortbread Stars DIY Kit from Cutter & Squidge (£9.90), containing shortbread mix, star cutters, chocolate chips and sprinkles, makes the crumbliest miniature shortbread cookies. But the real fun starts once the chocolate chips are melted and the sprinkles come out, for splattering on top Jackson Pollock-style.

This Traditional Gingerbread House Kit (£12.99) from Lakeland, has all the materials to make a detailed homely abode, including pre-baked biscuits with different textures that create bricks and roof tiles. The kit also includes icing, chocolate buttons, chewy sweets, hundreds and thousands, tiny sugar people and a pet dog for decorating.

This Santa's sleigh built from Create a Treat’s Gingerbread Sleigh Kit (£15.99) is charming. Just look at the reindeer’s smiles, their little scarfs, and Santa’s matching red nose. But as the master of your own design, you can give them frowns and change the mood completely – it’s hard work pulling Santa’s sleigh all night, after all.

This DIY Hansel & Gretel Gingerbread House Kit (£35) comes in a beautiful Biscuiteers box, making it a great gift for both children and grown-ups. It contains the brand’s trademark rich, vanilla biscuits, icing sugar, sprinkles, smarties and jelly-tot-like sweets, for you to build and decorate your own fairy tale house.

Giving the National Trust Gingerbread House Kit (£16) as gift is a great way to support one of our much-loved charities and spread festive cheer. There’s no baking required and it contains everything needed to build a colourful festive scene, including a chocolate box cottage complete with chimney, a tiny snowman, a chicken and little gingerbread people.

Maid of Gingerbread Bisc Kits are marketed as baking kits for grown-ups and this Make Your Own 3D Gingerbread Heart Box (£24), filled with tiny heart-shaped cookies, is utterly gorgeous. The heart box needs to be baked and built from scratch but the kit comes with gingerbread mix and a handy instruction booklet, complete with quirky illustrations, to avoid confusion.

Tesco’s Five Gingerbread Men Kit is ideal to have on standby for when you need to quickly whip up some festive snacks without baking, but want them to have a handmade feel. They cost a mere £1.80 for five gingerbread biscuits, red icing, sugar strands and chocolate pieces.

Make a charming gingerbread cottage with this Simply Gingerbread House Kit (£8.99). The gingerbread cookies come ready to build and decorate, along with icing and an assortment of festive candies. Take inspiration from this one’s windows framed with pink midget gem jellies and the door with little green knobs.

The Dunelm Make Your Own Gingerbread House kit comes in a gorgeous takeaway-style cardboard box. At £15 it makes a great secret Santa gift, containing gingerbread pieces, icing sugar and colourful candies, so keen craftsman can create their dream festive home.

This impressive Gingerbread Castle Kit, complete with a Smarties moat, is a fun decoration project for kids. It comes with pre-baked gingerbread pieces, sweets, icing, an icing bag and cardboard base. At £10, it would make a great stocking filler.

The Treat Kitchen Decorations Kit (£14.95) contains 27 ready-made gingerbread ornaments, such as stars, bells, snowman, doves and little houses, and icing to decorate your Christmas tree. Warning: they might not last long once they’re hung up on the tree.

This Make Your Own 3D Chocolate Biscuit Boom Box (£24) would make a great stocking filler or secret santa gift for a music fan. It requires baking and building, but comes with the necessary materials and easy to follow, illustrated instructions. The result is a quirky retro boombox that’s worth working for.

Create a Treat Train Kit (£12.99) is the perfect gift for a young railway enthusiast. It comes with pre-baked gingerbread pieces and sweets to make an old-fashioned steam train. Your task is to bring it to life with icing, smarties, boiled sweets, gummy sweets and sprinkles – you could even go off-piste and throw in your own sweets.

The Small Gingerbread House Kit (£10) from The Gingerbread House makes a cute and cosy cottage with stained glass windows made out of boiled sweets. Melting boiled sweets into window panes might sound challenging, but the technique is simple to master. The result is beautiful, colour-tinted windows which glow when light shines through.

The M&S Night Before Christmas Box (£15) contains everything you need to get in the festive mood. Alongside some incredibly jolly decorate-your-own-Santa biscuits, it contains a milk chocolate bar, four milk chocolate stirrers for hot drinks, a book and a colour-in door hanger.

These gorgeous gingerbread reindeer make a great festive centrepiece for a Christmas dessert spread. The Treat Kitchen Gingerbread Reindeer DIY Kit (£14.99) includes icing and gingerbread to make two reindeer figurines just crying out to be embellished.

When you’re tired of festive-themed everything, this Make Your Own 3D Green Tea Cacti kit (£24) is for you. We think 3D cactus biscuits are an ingenious use for green tea in cooking.

The gluten-free, milk-free, wheat-free Gingerbread House Kit from Tesco (£4) requires bakers to build their masterpiece from gingerbread mix. This is a great way to introduce little people to baking, as they must learn to weigh ingredients, knead mixture, roll dough and cut shapes, with guidance from someone experienced, of course. Then it’s time for the fun part – decorating with icing and jelly beans.

Make your little one’s pirate fantasies come true with the Gingerbread House Treasure Chest Kit (£10) from The Gingerbread House. It can be stuffed to the brim with gold coins, candy necklaces and other pirate bounty, and is a perfect-sized stocking filler.

The Create a Treat Large Gingerbread House Kit (£19.99) contains everything needed to build and decorate a luxury biscuit mansion, including pre-baked gingerbread cookies, icing and candies. We love the detail on this one – the gorgeous wreath, intricate brickwork, translucent icing window and gummy trees.

Grandma Wild’s Gingerbread Christmas Tree Decorating Kit from Lakeland (£2.99) is ideal to have on standby for entertaining youngsters over the festive season. It contains four gingerbread trees, icing and red sugar pearls, so little artists can get creative.

The Christmas Gingerbread House Kit (£6.25) from Waitrose is something straight out of a Bavarian fairy tale. It comes with all the kit needed to build a charming cottage, with a jelly bean-encrusted roof, and two jelly bean-studded fur trees framing the front lawn.

This Make Your Own Gingerbread Train Kit (£14.95) is a great way to keep kids busy on a rainy afternoon during the holidays. All you need is just one egg for the icing and young engineers can get to work, meticulously putting together their showpiece.

Bake and decorate your own glittery, prancing, pink unicorns using  the Unicorn Biscuit Baking Kit (£7.99) from BKD. The box contains raspberry biscuit mix, unicorn cookie cutters, baby pink icing, silver star sprinkles and pink hundreds and thousands, to create up to 25 picture perfect mythical creatures.

Why make a house when you can build a village? Don’t let the fun stop after one gingerbread creation, keep going with this Gingerbread Mini Village Kit (£19.99). Granted, you can only make tiny houses, but they’d make a great festive decoration on top of a Christmas cake.

If you’re in the market to make something impressive, The Gingerbread House Large Gingerbread House Kit (£20) is for you. It contains pre-baked gingerbread pieces, icing and sweets to create a big gingerbread house with a star-shaped, boiled sweet, stained glass window. It’ll look almost too good to eat.

Ugly Christmas sweaters are part and parcel of Christmas, and this Ugly Sweater Cookie Decorating Kit is great fun. The kit includes six vanilla cookies, white, red and green icing, and candy for decorating. Pull on your favourite jumper and make them as revolting as you dare.

No gingerbread house, train, cottage or castle would be complete without a troupe of gingerbread Mini Men (£2.50) to call it home. This cute packet of five from The Gingerbread House are just dying to be decorated and found a home. 

The Make Your Own Gingerbread House Kit from The Treat Kitchen (£14.95) is a textbook gingerbread house kit, with all the usual materials to build a quaint cottage. However, for gingerbread house purists who are against using plastic or cardboard bases, this kit includes a sturdy, edible gingerbread foundation, which can be decorated as a snow-filled front garden.

Now find out which mince pies came top in our 2018 taste test.

The John Lewis Build Your Own Gingerbread House (£12) includes pre-made gingerbread, icing and sweets to build and decorate a traditional gingerbread house. It doesn’t include gold coins, Brussel sprout chocolates, chocolate penguins and candy canes for your gold coin path, cabbage patch, garden pets and lamp post, as the picture depicts, but it’s all good inspiration.