Baker of World’s Largest Edible Gingerbread Village Doesn’t Really Want You to Eat It

It'll be staler than grandma's fruit cake by the time he's ready to give it away.

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If you’ve ever excused yourself from holiday baking because your kitchen is just too small, you’ve just lost your favorite excuse. Working out of his shoebox-sized kitchen in the South Bronx, Jon Lovitch spent the last ten months baking the world’s largest edible gingerbread village.

Verified by the Guinness Book of World Records and currently on exhibit at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York, “Gingerbread Lane” is a 300 square-foot mini-metropolis consisting of a colossal 2240 pounds of royal icing, 500 pounds of gingerbread and 400 pounds of M&Ms, candy canes, jelly beans, jujubes, gum drops and dozens of other candy decorations.

Starting in February, Lovitch baked each of the village’s 164 buildings – including a snow shovel repair shop, a snow man apple cider company, and the “Cinnamon & Nutmeg Railroad” headquarters – in his apartment after midnight when he got off work each night as an executive sous chef at the New York Marriott in Brooklyn. He stored each batch of gingerbread in a spare bedroom, where he also kept gallons of icing made from nothing but powdered sugar, egg whites and cream of tartar in a large plastic tub.“My wife likes the fact that I work on it at home, and I’m not out gambling or drinking,” he told the New York Times.

While Lovitch plans to give all of his gingerbread buildings away after the exhibit comes down in January, he told CBS Local, “I wouldn’t necessarily recommend eating them.” While technically edible, the months-old, cookie edifices would probably crack a tooth if you bit down too hard on them. No worries, though. Most of us will still be recovering from our holiday food coma in January anyway.