How This Woman Makes Epic Gingerbread Houses

[piano music]

I'm Emily Garland, and I'm a Gingerbread House Builder.

What I do know is almost entirely gingerbread replicas

of existing buildings, normally quite large scale,

but it's all edible.

[soft piano Christmas jingle]

[Emily guffaws]

Sorry. [Emily guffaws]

Okay. [Emily chuckles]

I think I actually initially got into gingerbread

because I wanted to do woodwork, but I also like baking,

and it's the perfect crossover between the two.

And as soon as I realized that you didn't have to make

just a standard shaped house, you could make anything,

then I got completely hooked.

Some of the things I get to make are epic

and I love all of them.

[light music]

[light music]

[cardboard scrapping]

We're here in my kitchen studio,

which is in Hackney, in East London.

This year I've got quite a few commissions like this one,

which is a private residence, that I'm making for a family

to have as their Christmas centerpiece.

I'm just translating

my 2D drawing

my 2D drawing

into 3D cardboard.

Always takes loads of time, but then in the end,

it makes it much easier when I'm baking

to know that everything will fit together perfectly.

For me, Christmas starts the first of September.

I've had some things take three months and

then other things I can do in a couple of days

depending on the size.

All of November and December is back to back, everyday.

[Emily laughs]

Sometimes one day off a week, but rarely,

and I accidentally do it every year because it's the season.

I'm just going to put these bits together roughly,

so I can start working out the angles of the roof pieces.

Then it means I can easily take it apart again

without damaging the cardboard 'cause

I'm gonna be needing them for templates to cut around.

I'm not a trained architect, so the way I always work is to,

sort of, rough it out in cardboard and keep cutting it

until it's right.

[upbeat Christmas tune]

This is the first step of making my dough.

I'm gonna melt together all of the sugars.

Brown sugar.

Treacle.

And the syrup.

My spice mix.

Basically whenever I come across gingerbread,

in the wild, and I try it, it's not gingerly enough.

I feel really strongly that the one thing you want from it,

is that you can taste the spices.

I've adjusted the recipes over the years,

it's probably maybe at least three times

the amount of spice that they had in the original.

Well I just wanted it to taste more spicy.

My spice mix is a secret because I spent ages

changing it over time, and now I'm really happy with it.

I do tell people my recipe 'cause I love people

to build their own things out of gingerbread;

that makes me really happy, but I think the one thing

I'll keep to myself is exactly the ratio of spices

that goes into it to make it,

so that mine's always exactly mine.

I have a recipe that doesn't have any raising agent

in it, so it's got no eggs and no bicarb or anything

that would make it puff up in the oven.

That means that when I roll it really flat

and cut the shapes out, I know they'll hold

their shape in the oven, which is really important.

And it's quite strong structurally,

but not too tough to eat it. [Emily laughs]

I think it's quite a nice balance.

I spent a lot of time working on my dough recipe.

So my biggest tips for people who are starting out

trying to make a house at home would be to make sure

all of the pieces are baked to the same amount.

If you're trying to just build a gingerbread house

but one of the walls, you didn't realize was

slightly under baked, the whole thing won't work.

So I have a special rolling pin that I use

which has these rollers on, so you can changes these

to have different thicknesses.

But I have really useful, or you can use dowels

to keep it completely even as you're rolling it out.

There are some tools that I use, I think of them

more like carpentry tools now. [Emily laughs]

I've got two very good quality knives.

And then the zester, that's my favourite tool.

And I use these miniature silicon spatulas that are pointed,

which I sometimes use those as a sort of trowel,

like a brick layer might use to build a wall,

and you can pick up icing with it, but also the tip

of it means that you can really tidy up edges.

So, some of the pieces are easier to cut then others:

the smaller the piece is, the harder they are.

So, now I've cut the pieces out,

it's time to put them in the oven.

Because I cut them directly onto the sheet,

I just carefully slide it on, and then it's ready to go.

The next step is to make the glue, which is also the icing,

which is water mixed with meringue powder,

which is water mixed with meringue powder,

which is basically dried egg whites.

And while that's whisking together, I sift the icing sugar,

ready to put in.

The egg white in royal icing is the key ingredient

because it makes the icing completely set really solid.

What I'm do once it's completely mixed is just dye

some of it with food coloring, to sort of match

the color of the gingerbread.

Just have brown icing for all of the joints

so it makes it very, slightly less noticeable.

And then I use white for decoration and

for around the outside, and the snow,

if you want snow on the ground, that kind of thing.

So I just add the icing sugar really gradually,

and then I'm gonna whisk it on high for about five minutes.

[mixer whirring]

This consistency works really well as the glue.

[zester grating]

[zester grating]

[utensils clanging]

This is the shape we've ended up with to fit in here,

just trying to make sure everything lines up really well.

And then my most used tool is my zester,

which I use as though, its a kind of,

like woodworkers use filing.

And I use that on almost every single joint,

because even though the biscuits baked very well

and they don't tend to spread in the oven,

I neaten them up to make them really square before I start,

also to avoid having loads of icing spill out after it.

So this is some of the icing that I have dyed brown.

I'm just gonna ice along all the exposed edges.

So I'm just gonna add this little side roof piece here.

Just gonna file these down a bit before I start.

[zester grating]

[upbeat tune]

[upbeat tune]

Some pieces are small enough that they hold up on their own

which is excellent. [Emily chuckles]

When I'm doing the big pieces at the beginning,

I have to use a lot of jars and stuff to help hold it up.

The icing, although it sets really solid,

it takes a good couple of minutes before

it's got a good purchase on the pieces,

its a sort of a balance.

Once it's in place, I tend to leave things

about 24 hours before I'd say it's all completely solid,

but after that time it's surprisingly strong.

I think the icing ends up stronger than the biscuit.

[upbeat Christmas tune]

I make edible Piñatas, so the whole thing

is made out of biscuit and then full of sweets.

Whilst it's all covered in icing, it becomes really

surprisingly difficult to smash. [Emily chuckles]

This I always find fascinating because

I think almost everyone else assumes I must hate it

when my work gets destroyed, or how could I bear it

that I spent so many hours making something

only for it to be demolished.

But I actively feel the opposite: it's my favorite

bit of it, is to know that someone is going to enjoy it.

And the only way for them to properly enjoy it is to eat it,

and the only way to do that is to completely destroy it.

[hammer smashes]

It's just part of it, and I think its almost more joyful

to be making something so temporary.

I love seeing people smash them to bits.

It brings me so much joy because I know that

then they're properly enjoying it.

So depends on what kind of building I'm doing,

as to how much detail goes into each element.

I am making as good a replica of it as I can.

[zester grating]

[utensils clang]

But in the end, it is biscuit.

[light piano music]

I want to retain the, sort of, essence of the building

and so it can be instantly recognizable.

With this one, I think we are pretty close

to the real thing.

I'd say nowadays about half my work get eaten,

and half of it doesn't.

And it just stays on display, which I find quite odd,

but I still think it's important to use my same recipe

because if I wasn't making it actually delicious,

what was the point, I'd just make it out of wood

or something.

Part of the enjoyment of it is the smell

and if you have a big display piece,

I had one where it was as part of a larger exhibition hall,

and you could smell the gingerbread for meters along

before you found it.

That was really lovely, and I think that having

that smell of the real recipe is an important part

even if it's just for display.

I like to use quite a range of things to decorate

my buildings, and it always depends on the client

and what kind of finished look they want.

Sometimes people want a very, like, realistic version

of the building, in which case I would just use quite

simple colors or other types of royal icing to attach

things like bobbles and little sprinkles and things

just to make it slightly more decorative.

One of my favourite things to use though is

this edible metallic paint.

[tapping]

You can get this luster dust and you mix it with alcohol,

and the alcohol evaporates off and leaves

just the dust behind, so you can paint with it

and get some incredible finishes which I love using.

Because also I have, just from a personal point of view

about eating biscuits, I often get disappointed

if there's too much icing on the biscuit when you eating it

because you just wanna be able to taste the flavor

and I want that for my gingerbread as well,

so I like using things where it's on the surface

but you can still see the texture of the biscuit

and the color of it behind.

One of the things I like to do is, I use a lot of small dots

and edible sprinkles and balls in my work

to make the equivalent of things like stonework

and extra detailing around windows and stuff.

This is some of the bits, so I take a bit more

artistic license at this stage.

Because once you've got the feel of the whole building,

I start to try and picture it more as a finished

gingerbread piece and think about the most, sort of,

decorative, fun elements to add.

Obviously, no house had big balls of icing

to the side of the door, but it'd be nice if they did.

Sometimes, just this bits can make all the difference.

From the way it looks, you can end up having

quite a plain facade to a really Christmas-y building,

just from these few decorations,

why I enjoy this bit a lot.

[slow piano music]

It took me a long time to find my particular style

when working with gingerbread.

If I have made a London installation or something,

I will have messaging people going I know that this is you,

which is really lovely.

And I think it's that I've developed this, sort of,

look that is maybe slightly different from the norm

where I don't really overly decorate with icing,

and I like to have those clean lines

and focus on the structure of the building

as much as the decoration of it.

[Emily sighs]

Okay.

I'm not allowed.

Because if you ever earned any money from baking,

you're not allowed to apply.

So, we do always watch Biscuit Week on Bake Off,

and I find it surprisingly stressful.

I'm spending too much energy willing them on

to make sure that they don't collapse and like yeah.

It's quite energy sapping. [Emily laughs]

But I love to see it.

[ball rolling]

The one thing I still have is the same excitement

and sort of childlike enjoyment of playing with biscuits.

That's what I want to encourage other people to do it for,

because it's such a childlike joy from playing with food.

[Emily chuckles]

[soft angelic music]

[soft angelic music]

[soft angelic music]

[soft piano music]

[soft piano and violin music]

[soft piano and violin music]

To anyone who's thinking of making a house this Christmas,

I would say just have loads of fun with it,

maybe try make something a little bit different

out of gingerbread, and have a really happy Christmas.

[piano music]

[piano music]