Gingerbread House

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A house where everything is edible is in many children’s fables and dreams. When my son was small, I had the opportunity to make different houses with pastry or sponge cake, forming them into the classic shape of a hut. The houses were enriched with elements inspired by the garden such as woodpiles, mushrooms, or flowers.

Last Christmas my son and his wife suggested we make a gingerbread house, typical in the American Christmas tradition. I was not worried because I figured it would be one of the usual huts. When I was informed that their idea was to make a copy of the Meyer May house (California) by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, I thought it was a joke. In fact, they wanted to reproduce exactly that pattern. So I accepted the challenge and thanks to their cooperation, we were able to reproduce what you see.

The construction of this house took 12 hours of work for each of us, 36 hours in total. It’s constructed of different sweets, many of which are the result of their research in the shops in the area where we live. The walls are made of gingerbread, the floors of bars of dark chocolate, torroncini serve as the stained glass windows, while barley sweets construct the windows, the floors of the terrace are square mints, and chocolates with coconut form the planters in the garden. A panettone was cut into pieces and was used as filler to reinforce the walls with lots of icing that provided an edible plaster to tie the structure and decorative elements.

My architect son made all the drawings of the various components. Colleen (his wife) prepared the dough and suggested directions aesthetic while the house was being built. In this way, we spent three evenings together as adults, but with the desire to be little children. The images are used to describe our experience. We will give the recipe to those who ask for it.

Merry Christmas.