Santa's Workshop

I was asked to create an extraordinary gingerbread house for Whole Foods Market. Having made a few gingerbread houses in the past, I knew two things: this would not be easy, and I could not do this alone. So I enlisted the help of my friend Lise Depres, who is an amazingly creative and talented baker that I worked with in the past.

The theme we came up with for the house was "Santa's workshop". The idea was that we would create a house (a min. 3ftx3ft in size) where the front was set up and decorated like your average gingerbread house, and the back was open so you could see inside the workshop with all the busy elves.

One thing I had learned from watching Food Network Challenge was that if you are building an extreme gingerbread house, you were going to need some extra support. So we made a trip to Home Depot for some wood. Lise ended up sawing the pieces of wood to fit herself (superwoman!). Me being an extremely clumsy person, was not going near a hand saw!

Step 1:

The walls of the house were so large, that we had to bake them in multiple pieces and glue them together with royal icing.

See those fancy windows? Gelatin leaves! The perfect glass window.

Next we constructed the second level of the house, along with the stairway.

A fireplace, chimney, and kitchen was also added...

After that came the fun part, decorating!

Taa Daa!!!!

This house will on display at Whole Foods Market Cambie location. There are also 8 other smaller houses on display that are built and decorated by each of the departments in the store, so there's lots of stuff to check out while you do your holiday shopping!