Creating gingerbread houses is a tradition for families during the holidays, but the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa took that tradition to another level when they revealed their 12-foot gingerbread house in the resort’s lobby on Dec. 2.
A usual gingerbread house is built in one night, but the scale of this project was months in the works before the final version was revealed on the second level of the resort’s lobby.
According to executive pastry chef James Victorino, the project included 75 pounds of brown sugar, 285 pounds of all-purpose flour, eight gallons of molasses and 25 dozen eggs to go with seemingly endless amounts of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.
“We started back in October, but it was on and off because we had a bunch of banquets so we had to fit it in when we could,” Victorino said. “We’re definitely proud of what we accomplished.”
When he first heard about the idea for the project, he was intrigued by the challenge as someone in the culinary world, because it is not every day that the task of creating a 12-foot gingerbread house presents itself.
“Anything like that is always very exciting, especially doing it here, because it is something on a much different scale than what they (Sawgrass Marriott) usually have,” Victorino said.
The Sawgrass Marriott is known for having its gingerbread village in the lobby, but this year decided to go even bigger, literally.
“We’ve done different iterations of gingerbread for the holidays over the years,” Sawgrass Marriott General Manager Todd Hickey said. “It makes the lobby smell good first of all, and with such an expansive atrium here, this was really the idea of our culinarians to really bring it about and create that ‘wow.’”
The house is made entirely of edible materials except for the lights and garland used and a pair of televisions that sit behind windows that have video of Santa working with his elves in his workshop on a loop.
Hershey bars were used to create the front door of the house and the names of the chefs that worked on the project are engraved into the door’s handle.
According to Victorino, the inspiration for the house came primarily from his own house and he also used glimpses of his Filipino culture within the design as well, including a light of a star inside a flower that was hung above the doorway.
“That is a lantern that is very traditional to Filipinos, which I wanted to incorporate to make it a little more personal as well,” Victorino said.
The steepness of the 12-foot roof was one of the more challenging aspects of the project and the design had to adapt at times to figure out the best way to go about achieving it.
The gingerbread shingles used for the roof were dyed with a red tint to give them a different look from the body of the house.
Once the holidays are over the gingerbread house will be taken apart and the materials will be recycled in a very unique way.
“The cool thing about this is that there is a lot of food involved and instead of sending all that food to the landfill, we’re going to put it on bee hill to feed our honeybees throughout the winter months when the flowers are low and there’s just not a lot of pollen,” Hickey said. “They’ll eat the sugar and the icing just like they would a flower, so we’re making sure that it’s not going to waste.”
