The Holidays recap--Grand America gingerbread house

Wow, has it been really four months since I wrote last?  I have just been extremely busy, and my laptop getting infected with some gnarly viruses didn't help either.  In my last post, I have mentioned that the holiday season is going to be like the passing of a hurricane.  Well...that was an understatement.

It felt more like an Armageddon.

Everyday was 13 to 14 hour-shift, and over one hundred reservations for the hotel's High Tea became the norm.  I mean, the paycheck was nice and plump, but physically I was very much drained.  My hands were starting to develop arthritis/carpal tunnel from piping out an INSANE. NUMBERS. OF. MACARONS.
It was getting to the point where we were making at least two batches every day.  I kid you not.

But other than the crazy work hours, the holidays are very eventful and fun!  We have a tradition of making a large gingerbread house for display every Christmas.  This year, the new exec pastry chef took things to the next level--he designed and built a life-sized gingerbread house.  When completed, this thing was large enough to accommodate several people (as long as they were under 5'10" in height)...

The gingerbread house required a wooden frame to support its massive structure.  Then planks after planks of real gingerbread were staple-gunned to the frame.
This is one of the sides of the house during construction.

And just to show how huge this thing is, I took a pic of one of the workers laying gingerbread shingles on the roof.  Apparently, this gentleman is a former roofer before he got into the culinary field.

Of course, a house must have windows!  The windows for this house was made from sugar, cast inside a wooden frame.

The interior was laid out with slabs of rice Krispy treats for flooring and colorful chocolate truffles, gumballs, and candy canes for wall decor.

 
Then right by the window was a toy elf indulging on macarons...which, by the way, are real, made by none other than me and my coworker.  We were wondering where the heck some of our supply disappeared to.

 
The finished house.  Yes, it's massive, it's cool, pretty....but alas, the colored windows made it really hard to see the inside.  And what's the point of decorating the interiors if no one can even see it?
And here are the stats for this house.  We ended up using a whopping 1200 lbs. of flour, 400 lbs. of sugar, 1200 eggs, 160 qts. of molasses, 800 lbs. of powdered sugar, 200 lbs. of rice Krispy treats, 200 lbs. of isomalt, and 25 lbs. of chocolate!

And what did we do with it after the holidays?  Apparently the whole thing went into garbage.  Yep.  It was heart-wrenching.  It was painful.  I even suggested that we summon a bunch of children to make their Hansel and Gretel fantasy come true (what kid wouldn't want to chow down on a life-sized gingerbread house??). But alas, it was carted out and was never seen again...