The art of gingerbread

Young Chang

Pastry chef Sheldon Millett calls the Gingerbread Village at the Four

Seasons Hotel a labor of love.

Containing 100 pounds of molding chocolate, 95 pounds of gingerbread

dough, 20 pounds of marzipan, 1,252 egg whites, 900 pretzel sticks, 2,400

pieces of candy and 2 million black sesame seeds, it’s understandable why

the Newport Beach chef uses the word “labor.”

And when you notice that the golfer on the greens of the miniature,

all-sugar Pelican Hill Golf Course has snow dusting his shoulders, that

the marzipan Keystone Kops and firefighters are standing outside a combo

police/fire house with Dalmatians lining a snow-padded walkway, and when

you see the pretzel-stick benches and the cinnamon stick bonfires and how

the roads are red and cobblestoned, you understand why Millett’s labor is

one of love.

“We’ve tried to make it like a little village,” Millett said. “We have

a toy store, we have Grandma’s house, we have a Victorian mansion, we

have Edward’s Cinema, we have a church, we have a barn, we have Pelican

Hill Golf Course, we have a quilt shop . . . It’s sort of a dreamland.”

Bonnie Brooling, store manager of Sur La Table in Corona del Mar, says

this is the year of the gingerbread.

“We sell about 15 ready-made houses a week,” she said. “I think a lot

of times things go [away] year after year, but there’s really a

resurgence of gingerbread. This year it’s all the talk.”

Millett says gingerbread dough retains its tradition because even the

smell of it screams Christmas.

“I guess it’s more European because the German and Swiss all use

ginger,” he said. “It’s all sort of the winter spice. The Christmas

spices. And it’s all in one dough.”

And the art of making gingerbread houses is, Millett proves,

infinitely variable. .

But if you’re making a simple gingerbread house without an elaborate

village sprawling beside it, start with paper cutouts of how you want

your house to look, Millet said. Then roll your gingerbread into sheets,

bake it and let it cool. Use a paper stencil to carve out your cutout

shape from the cooled dough.

To assemble the house, Millet said to use royal icing, which is a

mixture of egg whites, powdered sugar and lemon juice. The icing will

harden and act like glue to form the strength of the house as you meld

the edges of walls.

“It is a bit of an art to get the corners to match up and stay without

falling down,” Brooling warned.

Then decorate your house with whatever edible accessory you like. Gum

drops, candy canes, M&M;’s, Smarties and Skittles are common tools. Use

the royal icing to paste everything on.

If you’re going for a village -- this means a whole lot of paper

cutouts -- Millet has some simple rules:

Start laying out your houses from the center and work your way out. If

you start from the outside, in, you won’t be able to reach the center

with enough precision.

The center to the Four Seasons’ village is a snow mountain with lights

inside that rotate to light only one part at a time, for a more realistic

look. It’s made of chocolate, with royal icing for snow. It’s hollowed

with a tunnel, through which a nonedible red train circles.

Install all the lights in the houses before assembling your village on

the table. One year, Four Seasons’ chefs reversed the steps and ended up

drilling under the table to arrange the lights, Millett said.

If you’re planning on installing a train to run through a tunnel, make

sure the wires and everything else electric are connected outside the

mountain instead of inside the tunnel.

Lastly, make sure you love the task. Otherwise, you won’t have the

creativity or desire to stake little mailboxes in the snow. You won’t

really care whether the town sign drips with icicles. It won’t matter

whether the barn has little piglets, won’t even matter whether the bench

downtown is creviced with snow.

“It’s something that you really have to love to do, otherwise you

won’t have the patience to do it,” Millett said.