Borough Bakeoff: Bakers create replicas of iconic NYC buildings using gingerbread
Angela Barbuti
November 2, 2024 at 5:15 PM
The Big Apple just got a little sweeter.
Bakers from the five boroughs used gingerbread to create replicas of iconic NYC buildings from Macy's to the Dakota to Rockefeller Plaza.
Their creations will be displayed at the Museum of the City of New York's exhibition "Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off" beginning on Nov. 8 -- but The Post got an exclusive advance peek at the confectionary city.
Judges from NYC's dessert landmarks like the CEO of Magnolia Bakery and owner of Amy's Bread, as well as a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, chose 20 bakers -- both professionals and amateurs -- to compete from a pool of 60 applicants.
It took Midtowner Maria Sieber 110 hours to create her gingerbread version of the Empire State Building -- complete with a fondant King Kong and Spider-Man at the top.
Sieber, a native of Venezuela who owns the online bakery Cray Cray for Cakes, said she chose the building because "it has been in my life since I started working in the city in 2005, and even before when I visited NYC on vacation."
For her sugary version of Coney Island's Wonder Wheel, Susanna Caliendo used 500 sticks of chewing gum to craft its flooring -- along with 12 pounds of gingerbread dough and eight pounds of icing.
The Long Island native, who owns Something Sugared, partnered with Mario DiBiase of Sotto Voce restaurant in Park Slope, to make the famed Ferris wheel.
She said the ambitious project, decorated with characters from the 1964 Christmas classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," took two weeks to build.
"Between the two of us, probably around 100 hours including story boards, foam core mockup, patterns and then the actual baking, decorating and assembly," she explained.
Michael Wolfe of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn decided to craft a gingerbread copy of the 1929 Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower in Fort Greene, the tallest building in the borough at 512 feet until 2009.
The Ohio native used 13 pounds of flour, nine cups of sugar, 18 eggs and 1,000 grams of powdered sugar in the baking process.
"Two large boxes of Rice Krispies were used to add interior support and four 10-ounce bags of marshmallows," he explained.
Wolfe said no one assisted him in the lofty undertaking, which took him one month to complete.
"Nope, I wish!" he quipped.