Step inside the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center, and there’s a strong, sweet smell of molasses and cinnamon right in the lobby. It’s coming from a giant house decorated to the brim with real gingerbread.
“It's about 450 pounds of gingerbread total, maybe closer to 500 pounds of gingerbread, so a lot of gingerbread to handle,” Executive Pastry Chef Brielle Fratellone said. “It's over 110-120 pounds of molasses, probably about 70-80 pounds of sugar.”
In total, more than 2,000 pounds of ingredients were used to adorn the gingerbread mountain cabin. They do have to use some wood and hot glue to keep things in place, but most of the house is furnished with gingerbread. There’s a gingerbread reindeer family, a six-foot gingerbread tree, and her favorite addition: a pair of gingerbread skis.
“I am a big skier. I love it. I made my own personal set, even wrote my name,” she said. “It says ‘Chef’ on the bottom of each ski.”
Fratellone said it’s fun to be creative. She used shaved coconut flakes to make snow, isomalt sugar to make glass for the porch lanterns, and activated charcoal to make gingerbread stones for the chimney.
Planning for this gingerbread house started in July with a team of engineers sketching out rough designs. Now, for the last two months, more than 25 pastry chefs have been hard at work, using 80-quart mixing bowls to combine all those ingredients.
“(It) took us almost three days to bake off all of the gingerbread just for the house,” Fratellone said.
This is the first time Gaylord Rockies has built this giant gingerbread house, but their pastry team has some experience. For the past three years, each chef has made their own smaller-scale gingerbread house for the resort’s Mistletoe Village. This year’s theme is Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
There's a lot of gingerbread baking, but Fratellone enjoys the opportunity to be creative.
“We wanted to take up a notch, do something a little bit bigger, take on a new challenge,” Fratellone said. “I think that's really special.”
Fratellone joked with the engineering team that maybe they’ll make a life-sized village of gingerbread someday. But she still plans to rebuild this house next year with new decor and a new theme.
The giant gingerbread house will be on display through New Year's Day.
