Gingerbread House-Making Challenge!

Over the past year or so The Food Network has managed to completely infiltrate my soul, but although my obsessive intake of Iron Chef America, Alton Brown's Good Eats and Bobby Flay Throwdown stokes my adventurous eating habits and inner food critic, these programs usually do little to awaken my long-dormant chef/culinary creativist.

The one show that really pushes me to the brink of pots and pans is the "Challenge" series, where professional pastry chefs battle each other in the construction of sugar sculptures and themed cakes and pastries. Edible arts and crafts are right up my alley and when I caught a Gingerbread Challenge on television a few weeks ago I started to build hope around the gingerbread house as a project I could tackle, even in my tiny, near-kitchenless apartment.

But what fun is building the gingerbread house without the "challenge" of kicking all your friends' asses in a friendly competition? Hence, the gestation of Miss Stacia and Jay-Z's First (Annual??!!) Gingerbread House-Making Challenge!

We hosted the competition Sunday afternoon at Jay Z's apartment where Jaz provided some scrumptious brunch for our competitors, and I provided most of the building supplies.



All of the white icing once found on the UWS now resides here.


We decided to go the graham cracker route because, let's face it, seven people can't cook real gingerbread with only one oven and besides, I'm no Betty Crocker to begin with. The full set of rules decided upon by Miss Jay-Z were laid out as follows:

1.Contestants can start building their houses as soon as they arrive.

2.Each individual (or team) is responsible for acquiring their own basic materials (graham crackers and or actual gingerbread if you're brave, icing, candy, etc.), but we will provide emergency supplies, utensils and sweets for additional flair. Giving some thought to what you want to build before Sunday (so you can pick up the necessary components) is especially advised.

3a.Judging will commence at 5:45pm.

3b.Because we believe in fairness above all else, Stacey Brook will serve as both judge and contestant.

4.Points will be awarded for: creativity, execution, resemblance of house to various New York City structures, flirting with Jasmine, bringing beer/other drink, helping clean up the apartment, cooking Stacey and Jasmine dinner, etc.

5.Points will be deducted for: blah-ness of structure, the lameness of non-participation, leaving a mess.


Most of our guests arrived pretty close to starting time at 2pm, and got right down to work.


The Harvard Gingerbread House-Making Club. Pass the protractor.

The first person finished was ma soeur, the lovely and talented Miss Raquel, who sort of cheated by using an OJ carton as her base, but who had one of the loveliest-looking end products because of it. Definitely the closest to the traditional holiday-style confectionary houses, Raquel's little cottage was lined in licorice and surrounded by a blue icing and M&M moat. The edible abode could have certainly been the demise of Hansel and Gretel.


Love the ironically appropriate box copy.

Jay-Faust was the next to finish, although not be her own volition. Weak infrastructure eventually caused the collapse of her graham cracker Flatiron Building, a sad defeat for the 1999 High School East Holiday Bûche Champion.


"Voulez vous bûcher avec moi?"

The other contestants completed their gingerbread (graham cracker) masterpieces soon after, and included Eric’s homage to,
umm, Eric:



A “brothel in the red light district”:



And a house made almost completely out of gingerbread men, which I thought was the coolest idea ever, hence my disqualifying its creator from the winner's circle:



I was pretty much the last one to finish. From the beginning I had my heart set on making a "Jewgerbread House." I bought silver and blue M&M’s in Times Square (at 9 dollars a pound at the M&M store, mind you. Holy ish.) for proper decorative accent, and planned a special signifying detail for the front of my piece, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about the construction of the building itself until I got down on the floor an played with my grahams. And then the epiphany hit:


You can’t go wrong with six corners.

I am something of a perfectionist, and it took me almost three hours to build, ice and decorate this sucker, but once I finished I was quite pleased. Especially when it came time to add my major accenting detail:


Unroll for edible Torah Portion.

Once the last chocolate button was secured in place, I stood up and took about ninety seconds to deliberate before declaring myself the official winner of the 2006 Gingerbread Challenge!


Six months of shaky waitressing helped prepare me for this moment.

Jay-Z you owe me a clock radio (our awesome grand prize).

The award winning sculpture now sits on my desk at work, accepting praise and piquing the curiosity of all who pass by. I wonder how long the Jewgerbread house will last. I wonder if I could shellac the whole thing and send it to my grandmother in Florida. Would it make it there in one piece? Would grandma's friends in the senior citizen's community try to consume my waterproofed, culinary work of art?

Will someone from Ace of Cakes please hire my ass already?