I recently switched to Qt Creator as my IDE for gcc and MinGW builds. However I stumbled across a problem with the CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM variable.
I have compiled Ninja executables in my repository. I tell CMake to use the Ninja generator and call "set (CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/buildtools/ninja/${platformdir}/ninja")" from the first CMakeLists.txt.
However, to build the code, Qt Creator simply invokes "ninja" and not my custom set executable like it is supposed to do.
Before switching to Qt Creator I was using Eclipse CDT which does not have any problems using the custom path for the make tool (there are some other issues though, which is why I want to switch to Qt Creator).

Has anybody experienced the same problem and by chance found a way to solve it (without changing the build steps manually every time)?

Yes, I found these kits later that day. It's not quite what I was looking for as it's not a portable solution. But so far it's the best one that I know of and it gets the job done.