1. Baba Yaga Gingerbread House
Location: The New York Botanical Garden’s 2009 Gingerbread Adventures (Bronx, NY)
Irina Brandler, a Russian immigrant and owner of Sugar and Spice Bake
Shop in Bronx, NY, headed a team of four bakers to make a gingerbread
house for Baba Yaga, a witch-like character from Russian folklore who
lives in the forest in a hut that stands on chicken legs. Irina’s
version of the house stood more than two feet tall and featured a roof
covered in shredded wheat cereal and Necco Wafers, pretzel fences and ladder, a trail formed with Boston Baked Beans candy, and Christmas trees made of frosted ice cream cones and pretzel rods. Three domes on the top of the house were all shaped out of fondant—one dome made of a Hershey’s chocolate kiss melted and had to be replaced.
Each of these themes and more are represented in this year’s best
gingerbread house creations chosen by Food & Wine editors. Bakers
and confectionary designers from New York to Hawaii have been hard at
work crafting these sweet-scented masterpieces, employing thousands of
gallons of icing, as well as thousands of pounds of chocolate,
gingerbread dough, fondant, and candy to capture the essence of the holiday season.
2. The English Cottage
Location: The Grove Park Inn & Spa’s 2009 Gingerbread Competition (Asheville, NC)
Ten-year-old Lydia Gentry of Hendersonville, North Carolina, made
creative use of edible materials to construct her prize-winning
gingerbread house. Lydia thatched her cottage’s roof with shredded wheat
cereal, used chocolate rocks on the foundation and chimney, and poured
hard candy to create the cottage windows. Outside, frosting-covered
pasta formed porch supports while a chocolate candy and tapioca pearl
walkway wound its way beneath a vine-covered trellis (gum paste, pasta
and frosting), past rose bushes made of crushed cereal and marshmallow, and through a lawn made of frosting and speckled with coconut “snow.”
3. Santa’s German Gingerbread Village
Location: The Sheraton Princess Ka’iulani Hotel, 2010 (Honolulu, HI)
Hotel executive chef Ralf Bauer and a team of culinary architects spent
over 660 hours designing and constructing a gingerbread village that
paid homage to both Bauer’s native Germany and to old Hawaii. Medieval
churches, bell towers, train stations, a carousel and skating rink
mingled with iconic Hawaiian structures like the Kawaiha’o mission
church and the magnificent Iolani Palace. The winter wonderland stood
more than 14 1/2 feet high and 24 feet wide and was made with 200
gallons of icing, 100 pounds of dark chocolate, 30 pounds of white
chocolate, and 60 sheets of gingerbread.
4. Pied Piper Gingerbread House
Location: The New York Botanical Garden’s 2009 Gingerbread Adventures (Bronx, NY)
The mother-daughter duo behind Ardsley, New York’s Riviera Bake House
took inspiration from daughter Liv Hansen’s favorite childhood fairytale
to create their 2-foot tall structure. No candy was used to decorate;
Liv instead completed detail work using a pipeable, watered-down recipe
for gingerbread. She sculpted all of the mice and the Pied Piper from
marzipan, and constructed the roof from cereal. The team dedicated five days to the project, using approximately 10 pounds of gingerbread and 2 to 3 gallons of icing.
5. First Family Holiday House
Location: The Grove Park Inn & Spa’s 2009 Gingerbread Competition (Asheville, NC)
Carolina Montoya and husband Fernado Puga spent 302 hours over the
course of two months to create their gingerbread house. The
traditionally designed structure featured President Barack Obama, who
appeared to be climbing out the window and up onto the chimney with a
bag full of toys. Montoya and Puga’s all-edible entry was constructed of
gingerbread, fondant, gum paste, coconut, Rice Krispies cereal, and breath strips for window panes.
6. A Christmas Story
Location: The Seattle Sheraton’s 2009 Gingerbread Village (Seattle, WA)
Prompted by the theme “Reel Christmas,” a team of Seattle Sheraton
culinary staff and area architecture firm DLR Group created this cheeky
homage to the 1983 Christmas comedy film classic A Christmas Story.
Weighing around 200 pounds, the gingerbread structure featured edible
reenactments of memorable movie scenes—including fondant versions of Ralphie and friend Flick by the flagpole in an amazingly detailed gingerbread neighborhood, and a recreation of the film’s iconic leg lamp sporting licorice “fringe.”
7. Gingerbread Ranch
Location: The Grove Park Inn & Spa’s 2009 Gingerbread Competition (Asheville, NC)
Rita and Monte Adams’ scene tells the story of Santa getting ready to
ride out of an old western town following dinner at the Jingle Café, gift shopping
at the Rocky Mountain toy shop, and a night’s rest at the Holly Tree
Hotel. In the scene, Santa has saddled up a solid chocolate horse while
elves have loaded his coach with Christmas toys. The couple used 15
pounds of flour, 22 1/2 pounds of fondant, 12 pounds of sugar, and dozens of other ingredients to make this gingerbread tableau.
8. Three Little Pigs Gingerbread House
Location: The New York Botanical Garden’s 2009 Gingerbread Adventures (Bronx, NY)
For her fairy-tale-themed confection, Cake Power’s Kate Sullivan
constructed an 18-inch-tall gingerbread house featuring three little
pigs and a wolf all made of fondant (the original versions, made of
modeling chocolate, melted in the Botanical Garden’s greenhouse). The
house itself, constructed of embossed gingerbread, featured such
incredible tiny details as a jellybean-covered fireplace, string
licorice rag rug, gumball lamp
and vase, windows made of poured blue-tinted hard sugar, and a whimsical
hanging portrait of a Star Wars clone trooper drawn in food marker.
9. London Theatre: The Gingerbread Nutcracker
Location: The New York Botanical Garden’s 2010 Gingerbread Adventures (Bronx, NY)
It took four full days, two bakers (Kate Sullivan of Cake Power and
Patti Paige of Baked Ideas) and two interns to complete this theatrical
project from beginning to end. Modeled on the stage of the London
Coliseum opera house, the structure — measuring 18 inches tall — and
characters were all made of gingerbread, while the red curtain above was
covered in fondant. Everything except the red-and-white striped mint
balls was either baked from scratch or rolled, cut, piped or painted in
food color by hand.
10. Cathedral of the Angels
Location: The Grove Park Inn & Spa’s 2009 Gingerbread Competition (Asheville, NC)
Inspired by the way light illuminates the Bernini sculpture, “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,”
in Rome, Billie Mochow set out to construct a gingerbread recreation
that also appeared to have light coming from it. She began her building
from the inside out, forming the mother and child figures from
gingerbread and “dressing” them in gumpaste. The faceless people
surrounding were similarly constructed from hand-cut gingerbread cookies
dressed to appear dimensional. Outside the architectural cathedral,
Mochow stacked ice cream cones to form the snow-covered evergreen trees.
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