Giant Gingerbread Sandcastle

I crafted this giant gingerbread house sandcastle for the December 2014 Viacom holiday beach-themed party in Santa Monica, California, USA. The 100% edible castle, which measured 4 feet by 2 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet in height and included the logos for MTV, VH1, LogoTV, CMT, Spike, and TV Land embedded into its lower walls.

This hefty dessert centerpiece contained over 80 pounds of gingerbread house cookie dough, 75 pounds of royal icing and 60 pounds of rice treats as well as piles of cookie sand, caramels, chocolate, and sour fruit strips.

The windows and doors were rimmed with twisted rope dough using a baked overlay effect.

The project took a total of 3 weeks to complete. The template design, gingerbread house cookie dough baking, decoration & assembly required approximately 100 hours.

The trickiest part about engineering a cookie structure of this magnitude is keeping track of all the many parts. Video instructions on how to design and code DIY paper templates for custom gingerbread house designs can be found in the following kit:

Gingerbread House Dough Recipe & Baking Instructions

The windows and doors were created using my overlay and freestanding techniques.

The dripping effect and inlaid icing windows are made with royal icing. I show how to accomplish these designs in Gingerbread House Decoration and Construction.

The inlaid vine pattern, chocolate ruffle, and rainbow dot candy effect were all accomplished with royal icing. I show how to accomplish these designs in the videos that come with the kit, Gingerbread House Decoration and Construction.

This structure was transported in parts then assembled on site.

I show how to make the round brick towers in Gingerbread House Decoration and Construction.

These were all the uppermost parts of the gingerbread castle.

Closeup of a tower with royal icing dripping effect, caramel buttresses, brick effect and round structures, which I demonstrate in video tutorials in Gingerbread House Decoration and Construction. The baked in twisted window frames, twisted door frames, overlaid windows are all in video tutorial in Gingerbread House Dough Recipe & Baking Instructions.