Guests flock to larger-than-life gingerbread house
Print Edition
Like something out of “Hansel and Gretel,” a larger-than-life gingerbread house made with hundreds of pounds of sugar and spice has been luring in guests at one southern Arizona resort.
Much like the fairy tale, they are free to enter and sit down by a roaring fire. But there is no wicked witch. Instead, there’s a server with a three-course menu. A team of pastry chefs at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain in Marana decided this Christmas to go make a gingerbread building that was more than a display. The 5.8-meter-tall “house” has been operating for the past month as a private dining room and become valuable real estate in terms of the attention.
There’s no cost to walk through. But for US$150, you can reserve the whole thing. Up to six people can sit down and order meals and beverages from the hotel kitchen. The fireside fee does not include food.
The idea of a life-size gingerbread house where people could go in and out drew skepticism, even from some hotel workers. But head pastry chef Daniel Mangione was confident it could be done. “There’s a lot of gingerbread houses out there but usually it’s just a facade and the inside is forgotten about,” Mangione said. “But this year we really wanted to see if we could make it different.”
Up since the Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, the house will be coming down after Sunday.
Pastry chefs first prepped for construction back in June by making batches of gingerbread daily. They baked them with a reddish hue and cut them into “bricks.” They also pre-ordered massive quantities of ingredients including 90 kilograms of ginger powder, 180 kilograms of honey, 22.5 kilograms of cinnamon and 4.5 kilograms of nutmeg.
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