A basketful of potential inhabitants of the house.

A new Guinness World Record has been set by a group of volunteers in Texas, who have worked together to create the largest gingerbread house in the world in order to raise money for charity.

The 21-foot high gingerbread house, located in Bryan, Texas, was constructed by the Traditions Club close to Texas A&M University, with all profits from paying visitors to the house going towards a trauma center at the local St Joseph’s Hospital.

The house has an edible exterior mounted over a wooden frame and covers an area almost the size of a tennis court. To make the house, 816kg of butter, 7,200 eggs, 3,265kg of flour and almost 1,360kg of brown sugar was used, and the structure was then decorated using 22,304 pieces of donated hard candy.

Estimates put the calorie count of the house at almost 36 million calories. “We think big around here and we are competitive,” Bill Horton, general manager of the Traditions Club, told local newspaper reports.

The builders have had one problem with the giant gingerbread house though, as Mr Horton explains: “One problem we did not anticipate was bees on warm days. They have been coming over, getting so much sugar and stumbling around like they are drunk. But no one has gotten stung,” he added.