The World's Largest Gingerbread Village Opens in New York: How Much Sweets Were Spent on It
'03.12.2024'
ForumDaily New York
GingerBread Lane, the world's largest gingerbread village, has opened at The Shops at Columbus Circle, featuring nutcrackers driving a hot dog cart, snowmen, a Santa driving a cab, and more New York-themed creations, reports Time-out.
You can visit the exhibit until January 5. You will find this four-tiered gingerbread village on the second floor of the Columbus Circle shopping center. Visiting is free. For more information, see here.
In this charming village, the local cafe sells North Pole Holiday Blend hot chocolate, polar bears rule shop bagels next door, and the I Want a Hippopotamus Gift Store is bustling with activity.
This is GingerBread Lane, a confectionary creation by John Lovich.
Lovich, aka “The Gingerbread Man,” holds the Guinness World Record for creating the largest gingerbread village. Lovich made his first gingerbread house as a teenager in Kansas City in 1994, when he created 14 gingerbread houses for a display at a local hotel. He enjoyed watching guests react with delight to the confectionary spectacle, and it sparked a passion for this seasonal creativity.
If you want to learn how to make your own gingerbread house, Lovich offers tutorials because he knows it's not an easy task.
Gingerbread Santa's Workshop
Each year, Lovich combines his experience as a chef and pastry chef to create GingerBread Village, a year-long process during which he transforms the basement of his Queens home into a workshop.
Gingerbread houses occupy every available surface – tables, shelves, sofas, bookcases and windowsills. Any visitor must carefully navigate narrow passages. A forgotten bag of icing lies on the railing. A faint, sweet smell hangs in the air. Purple jelly beans, orange Skittles, pink M&Ms and red gummies serve as tiles covering the top of each gingerbread creation.
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He buys expired candy every holiday season to transform the now inedible treats into a visual spectacle. By fall each year, he's working 100-hour weeks to complete each intricate detail.
Although all the houses are made from real ingredients (icing, gingerbread, and candy), they are not edible. Many of the materials are expired, hard as rocks, and have been sitting for months.
GingerBread Lane by the Numbers
Given the size and scale exposure, the facts and figures are staggering.
- 23 jelly beans;
- 12 M&Ms;
- 3500 pieces of chewing gum;
- 870 kg of glaze;
- 1120 lollipops;
- 780 gingerbread figures;
- 700 egg whites;
- 50 square meters of gingerbread;
- 192 kg of sweets;
- 800 hours of work;
- 9 kg food coloring;
- 1 gingerbread man - John Lovich!
