Hotel Paso Del Norte prepares to unveil life-sized gingerbread house
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The pastry team at Hotel Paso De Norte is putting the finishing touches on a life-sized gingerbread house.
300 gingerbread cookies, 300 pounds of icing, and 100 pounds of candy may sound like a sugar rush but It's only some of the ingredients used to make a life-sized gingerbread house.
To bring the giant, culinary confection to life the pastry team used:
- 300 homemade giant gingerbread cookies
- 360 lbs. of icing
- 5 lbs. of candy canes
- 30 lbs. of candy peppermints
- 25 lbs. of powdered sugar
- 15 lbs. of Skittles
- 10 lbs. of Rice Krispies
- 5 lbs. of Hershey’s
- 5 lbs. of M&M’s
- 5 lbs. of Reese’s
The pastry team at Hotel Paso Del Norte has put in weeks of preparations and hours of decorations to bring the gingerbread house to life.
"Yeah, a lot of math and planning and baking. Me and my team, we worked about two weeks before we started, like actually building it," said Briana Paredes, Executive Pastry Chef.
Briana is the executive pastry chef at Hotel Paso del Norte. This is her second year leading the build of a gingerbread house of this size. Preparations begin early with gingerbread baking.
"So each one on my team. We have a routine because one will make the cookie the cookie dough, then one will roll it and one bake it. So was like a work of three," said Paredes.
The house was made with 300 pounds of icing and 100 pounds of candy but that's not all.
"We use a lot of ingredients. Our main item was flour. A lot of a lot of flour and sugar. We use two different kinds of sugar we use here in syrup, all out of spices and molasses. A lot of molasses as well", said Paredes.
The peppermint candy decorations also took hours of preparation.
"So we had to take up individually like the paper wrap over each one of them. So now we use a mold where we place the candies over there and we bake them, so we bake them and then we got the tiles," Paredes.
The sugary creation is not complete yet but will be unveiled this Saturday during the hotel's inagrual tree lighting celebration.
"I'm really thankful that we have like a really good team that is helping to build this and also to show something here in El Paso that it's something really special from us, to them," said Paredes.
The gingerbread house will be on display in the hotel lobby and open to the public to visit during Hotel Paso Del Norte’s inaugural tree lighting ceremony on December 2nd from 4:30- 6:30.
The lighting will also feature Santa Claus, a special guest from the North Pole, local school choirs, s'mores, and of course cookies.
