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Before booking a room at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center during the month of December, ask yourself: Do I identify more with Buddy the Elf or the Grinch? If your answer is the latter, you might want to reconsider the timing of your staycation (or prepare for your heart to grow three sizes). From Thanksgiving week to New Year’s Day, the Aurora hotel offers a lengthy list of Christmas-themed activities and attractions including indoor snow tubing, a festive pop-up tiki bar, photos with Santa and storytime with Mrs. Claus, elf training lessons, and an ice sculpture village that brings to life Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
One new addition to this year’s Christmas at the Gaylord programming: a life-size gingerbread cabin (the hotel’s biggest yet) in the main lobby. Here, Brielle Fratellone, executive pastry chef at the resort, walks us through the number of bakers, ingredients, and hours required to pull off the project worthy of a firm Paul Hollywood handshake.
The Concept: Two teams, four months of preparation
For the past three years, each member of the Gaylord’s pastry team has created their own miniature gingerbread house or shop for a Christmas village window display in the resort’s lobby. “This was the next step,” Fratellone says of the idea to build a life size structure in addition to the individual miniatures.
Starting in July, the pastry team worked alongside the resort’s engineering department to sketch plans for a Colorado-themed mountain cabin, build the home’s structural wood framing, and bake and assemble the finished project. “We all offered expertise in our different areas to answer questions like: How can we get power here to add working lights inside the house? Where does the front desk need to move to so we can take up this space? What kind of roof shingles is it going to have?” Fratellone says.
The Assembly: 25 pastry cooks, 450 pounds of gingerbread dough
Every member of Fratellone’s 25-person team was involved in the making of the cabin. Starting in October, they began mixing, rolling out, cutting, and baking the 450 pounds of gingerbread dough that would become hundreds of round roof shingles, three-inch-by-12-inch rectangular siding pieces, and decorative accents including a wreath and a welcome mat for the front porch and a family of reindeer outside the house. “When we got closer to our deadline, someone was scheduled every moment of every day doing gingerbread work,” Fratellone says.
Music isn’t typically allowed in the pastry shop kitchen, but in the days leading up to the gingerbread house reveal, bakers worked to the tune of holiday favorites, and the traditional oven timer was swapped for one that plays “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Fratellone says that holiday spirit seeped into her time off as well. “I was hanging Christmas lights on my house when the weather in Denver was still 70 degrees,” she says.
After sanding down each piece’s edges with a microplane to “polish them up a bit,” Fratellone says, the pastry team spent three days adhering the gingerbread to the wood frame using mostly royal icing. “We used a little bit of hot glue for the heavier pieces,” says Fratellone, noting that keeping the structure intact for a six-week span—especially in Colorado’s dry climate—required help from inedible ingredients. Panes of delicate sugar glass act as the cabin’s frosted windows, which are illuminated from the inside out.
The Finishing Touches: 1,000 gumballs, 50 pounds of coconut
For a light display that would make Clark Griswold proud, the pastry team lined the roof with 1,000 sour gumballs that mimic multicolor Christmas lights. And because no Colorado mountain cabin is complete without fresh powder, 50 pounds of desiccated coconut were sprinkled throughout the scene. “It’s more of a fine-ground coconut, so it really looks like freshly fallen snow,” Fratellone says. A pair of gingerbread skis sits on the front porch, while holly and poinsettias made of sugar line the windows.
Though visitors can’t walk inside of the structure, they are invited to take pictures of the display now through January 1. As for what happens to the completed cabin after the holidays? “The cookies will be composted and the wood structure will be broken down and saved to make into a house again next year,” Fratellone says.
