Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Gingerbread 2012: Canuck Place Children’s Hospice

A few years ago I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces.

Last year, I opted to make the Urban Brownstone, which is rated as one of the more difficult houses to make in the book. Despite the written difficulty level, I found the baking of the walls to be pretty easy, and the decorating wasn’t too difficult. In my blog post summarizing that build, I wrote:

Next year, I am strongly considering making my own house out of gingerbread.

Canuck Place Children's Hospice (not a photo of gingerbread).

Perhaps I was just a bit too ambitious with my plans this year.

My inspiration: Canuck Place Children’s Hospice, also known as Glen Brae Manor, also known as the Tait Mansion.

Canuck Place provides care for children with life-threatening illnesses, and support for those kid’s families. The kids that stay here have access to the best palliative care that is available, at a first rate facility – the first of it’s kind in North America.

Players from the Vancouver Canucks are often seen at Canuck Place to visit – to put smiles on kid’s faces, and perhaps to keep their own lives in perspective.

Usually during a regular NHL season, there are great fundraising efforts for Canuck Place and awareness through those efforts is elevated. During the lockout this year, I thought it might be a fun idea to donate this year’s gingerbread house to Canuck Place. And what better building to model than the hospice itself!

The structure is a heritage building within the Shaughnessy neighbourhood in Vancouver, BC. It is a 4-story mansion, built in 1910. It has very distinctive domed turrets, and features curved exterior walls on nearly every side of the house. There is a large covered porch at the front of the mansion, as well as on the east and west sides of the building.

: Design of exterior walls. Many pieces and this didn’t even include turrets, domes, roof, dormers.

: One of my major design concerns was being able to bake a dome out of gingerbread. I used a ball-shaped cake pan here.

: Another concern was being able to bend gingerbread to fit the many curved walls in the building. Here I used card stock paper over a rough LEGO mold for support.

: The turrets didn’t come out perfectly round. A happy coincidence since light from the inside needed to come through anyway.

: Beginning to assemble the walls with a complex system of coffee mugs. Knowing the rough dimensions of the building was useful in figuring out where the walls would go.

: More of the exterior walls up, held together by royal icing. The turrets didn’t fit quite right, so I ended up shaving off thin bits here.

: At this point I was able to actually design, measure and bake the roof pieces.

: Domes and half of the roof are attached here with icing, supports, and pins (removed later) to hold the pieces on.

: Lower portion of 3 porches are attached, and the roof is tiled here with Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape, which is available everywhere until you look for it. =)

: Front porch roof is attached and decorated. Dormers were baked and attached also.

: Detail shot of the front walk way, made with broken Necco wafers.

: Detail shot of the West porch, from the rear of the house. Railings are made from piped royal icing.

: Detail shot of the East porch, from the rear of the house. Grass is made from coconut, mixed with good ole green Food Club Food Colouring.

: Overhead photo of the house, showing the landscaping layout.

: Detail shot of the front yard. Shrubs and trees are made of Rice Krispie treats, with green food colouring added to the marshmallow mix.

: Lighting check.

Photo of the final house.

That’s it! I have to thank my wife Marnie for being the voice of reason, and for the use of her equipment – it helps to have a cake decorator for a wife when you need to make 10 pounds of gingerbread dough. It also helped immensely to have her creativity and an extra set of steady hands. I’d also like to thank Dianna (@Dianna_Chr) for arranging access to the Canuck Place grounds, and Dawn (@light_and_lit) for some good baking advice.

Hope you enjoyed the post as much as I enjoyed making this house!

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