The house that tech built: Bakers use lasers, power tools at Gingerbread House Competition

ASHEVILLE, N.C - With just days to go before the 27th National Gingerbread House Competition, Michael Andreacola was worried about the lasers.

On Nov. 18, 226 edible sculptures would fill the Omni Grove Park Inn's grand ballroom, their makers vying for prize money and sometimes enough attention to earn them a spot on the Food Network.

There are some rules: Kids can't sculpt with melted sugar — it's too dangerous — but teen and adult competitors can. And new this year in the rule book: Each entry may have no more than 40% mechanically produced parts, including "machine designed, 3D printed and laser cut components."

"We call it the 'Michael memorial rule,' " said Andreacola's wife, Julie.

Last year, the Andreacolas, of Indian Trail, North Carolina, won first place in the adult category with their Santa's workshop festooned with working laser-cut gingerbread gears.

The Andreacolas are tech people, she for Microsoft and he for a pharmaceutical company. They aren't traditional bakers, but they're part of a growing group in competitive gingerbread: science-minded people who want to test the limits of food.

"People are pushing the limit of the media outside the traditional house and bringing in other elements to help push the envelope of what you can do," said Julie Andreacola. "I would venture to say more engineers are going to get into it just to see what you can do with this edible product."

'Disrupting gingerbread'

The Andreacolas use 3D printers to make molds and other special gingerbread tools, though they head to the Harris Teeter baking department if they need any edible printing done.

Perhaps because it's so accessible, edible printing remains a popular technical tool in a gingerbread maker's toolbox. But not everyone has lasers at home, so the Andreacolas understand the new rule establishing a technology limit.

"Technology can really disrupt something like this, so we’re fine with it," said Julie Andreacola. "Not everyone has access to the same technology we do, and this is a way of allowing everyone to feel like their skills can shine."

Still, the Andreacolas said technology is much more than button-pushing. The precision laser requires hours of design work on the front end. Then there's the arduous task of adapting the gingerbread so it doesn't burst into flames.

"The hardest part is baking gingerbread to 2 millimeters thick, and having it be exactly that all the way through," Julie Andreacola said. "It’s interesting to see how traditional baking has to align with technology, and that’s something we’ve had to learn."

Though the tech couple used a laser to engineer special parts for their extruder to fashion a tiny I-beam and "metal" pipes out of fondant, an old-school method helped them roll out wafer-thin dough: a hand-crank pasta machine.

It's not easy.

“But I make gingerbread do what I tell it to do," Michael Andreacola said. This year, he wants such gingerbread skills to be known. "I really have to make it into the top 10 to prove it wasn’t the laser."

Dremel drills over spatulas

Grier Rubeling, from Cary, North Carolina, prefers power tools over lasers. She owns a consulting firm for financial advisers, and also has a DIY blog where she showcases her woodworking skills and shares recipes for edible plastic and glue.

In 2018, her first year competing, she won third place for her Reindeer Playing Poker in the Gingerbread House Competition. Afterward, she was invited on Food Network's Haunted Gingerbread Showdown, where she became a finalist, despite having no formal culinary training.

"I think I have an advantage in that I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I try to play to them," she said.

For Reindeer Playing Poker, she built a table with dried bucatini pasta instead of wooden pegs to fit her gingerbread "wood" together. Then she sanded it, stained it and lacquered it with edible paint before placing it on a round braided rug.

"That rug — that's just braided raw gingerbread, and it probably took me two weeks to make that stinking thing," Rubeling said.

But other details were more high-tech. Rubeling made playing cards using a special printer equipped to print their tiny backs and faces with edible ink on edible wafer paper.

On the table: copper cups filled with drinks fashioned from Tylose glue, in which floated ice cubes made with isomalt nibs, a sugar substitute engineered from natural beet sugar that can be fashioned to look like glass — or frozen water.

Those details helped make Rubeling's story come to life, and she credits them with helping her win.

"It has curb appeal from far away, and it's even better up close," she said.

Related:

• OpenTable: Asheville's Omni Grove Park Inn among 100 top scenic restaurant views in U.S.

• What does it take to build a gingerbread replica of Biltmore House?

So how do these houses taste?

While gingerbread kits and candy decor abound, the market for construction-grade gingerbread is so small as to be relatively nonexistent, which helps breed innovation among the competitive gingerbread circuit.

"If I were to create a boat, I could go to Lowe's and buy what I need, but in this case I have to create my building materials myself," Rubeling said.

That's in part because many of these edible materials aren't meant to be eaten at all, like the unappetizing-sounding "gingerbread dead dough" and "oven plywood" teen competitor Chloe Jennings, 17, of Purlear, North Carolina, bakes using recipes developed by former gingerbread judges.

"It has to be 100% edible, but 100% edible doesn’t mean it tastes good," she said.

Those recipes were made to beat humidity, the chief enemy of gingerbread houses, as well as gravity. It takes a scientific mind to battle those forces of nature.

That's one way Meghan Morris, a 23-year-old lab analyst from Apex, North Carolina, has a leg up on the competition. She's competed in the Grove Parks Inn's competition since she was a teenager and recently won Food Network’s Haunted Gingerbread Showdown.

For last year's Grove Park piece, Morris fashioned a twisted tree, suspending from it a fox on a swing with ropes made from dehydrated celery fibers. "Celery is 90% water and the rest is cellulose, and it's surprisingly durable," she said.

Durability is key for Morris, who specializes in stacks of gingerbread, balanced in seemingly gravity-defying ways and carved with traditional woodworking tools, from belt sanders to jigsaws and Dremels for detailing.

"The gingerbread recipe I use for that needs to be humidity-proof, which is a different recipe than if I'm making a house I’m going to eat," she said.

For that reason, Morris uses light corn syrup rather than molasses in her construction gingerbread.

"It's less hygroscopic, and it doesn’t absorb water from the air as readily," she explained.

Her pieces come together with the help of chemistry, reason and scientific curiosity.

"People who are into science have to be creative to find different solutions," she said. "You can’t not have a creative, problem-solving mind and be in science."

That makes Morris a worthy competitor in gingerbread competitions, and she imagines others like her will follow suit.

"Oftentimes, I find that most scientists I know have at least one art thing on the side."

IF YOU GO

Winning creations from the 27th annual National Gingerbread House Competition will be on display Nov. 20-Jan. 4 in the Grand Ballroom of the Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina. Nonguests may view the pieces after 3 p.m. Sunday or anytime Monday-Thursday, based on parking availability and excluding holidays. Display access is subject to hotel capacity. More at omnihotels.com.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: National Gingerbread House Competition: The science behind the sweets