If you smell gingerbread at the Museum of the City of New York, it means the holidays are just around the corner because the annual Gingerbread NYC: Borough Bake-off has arrived. NBC New York’s Kiki Intarasuwan reports.
New York City looks good enough to eat at a baking competition highlighting the best of the five boroughs.
Before visitors at the Museum of the City of New York can see its new holiday exhibit, they can tell that festivities are right around the corner as greeted with the sweet smell of gingerbread. The 3rd annual "Gingerbread NYC: Borough Bake-off" competition is where 20 professional and amateur bakers from across the city battled to be the most iconic of NYC icons.
"They are the best of the best," said restauranteur Melba Wilson, the owner of Melba's in Harlem, and one of the judges at this year's bake-off.
Two rows of impressively decorated gingerbread structures were on display at the MCNY on Friday and visitors are invited to help decide the winner. Out of 20 competitors, only two represented the Bronx and Staten Island while the rest of the submissions came from the three other boroughs.
Patty Lambrou-Kalognomas, of Pelham's Patty Pops, was last year's overall winner with her creation of the birthplace of hip-hop and she returned this year with a personal touch.
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To represent her home borough, Lambrou-Kalognomas centered her gingerbread masterpiece around Southern Boulevard and surrounded it with Fordham University's Keating Hall (where she met her husband), the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden's conservatory and icing-decorated train from the NYBG's beloved holiday train show.
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The main challenge of the competition isn't the baking part, Lambrou-Kalognomas told NBC New York, but it's putting pen to paper.
"There's so much you can do and it's hard to channel which fun ideas you want to run with," she said. "Getting started was the hardest part but once we had our sketch down, time to put everything together, it just became fun."
Other iconic New York City scenes at the show included the Empire State Building featuring King Kong and Spider-man at the top, Rockefeller Center and its ice rink, Macy's Flagship store, The Dakota and realistic-looking pizza pies.
In Brooklyn, there's Green-Wood Cemetery, Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, The Church of St. Francis Xavier, Prospect Park Boathouse, Coney Island and the Wonder Wheel, a deli featuring a garbage truck and of course, we can't forget a rat. Over in Queens, Forest Hills Station Square, Belmont Park racetrack and Maspeth Town Hall were sweetly decorated. Lastly, Staten Island joined the festivities with Fort Wadsworth.
Judges have their work cut out for them.
In addition to the five best borough spirit awards, they had to decide the overall winner as well as the winner for the most realistic, the most unique and the good enough to eat awards.
“I'm really looking for the best representation of the borough. I'm looking for creativity, uniqueness and I'm looking at the line," Wilson said of her judging criteria. "I also want to know if the baker had a great time."
Being the only baker from her borough, Patty snagged the "best borough spirit" award as well as the "good enough to eat" award, which was tied with Coney Island.
Susanna Caliendo of Something Sugared and Mario Dibiase of SottoVoce, who teamed up last year to recreate the Grand Army Plaza, blew the judges away this year with their structurally sound Wonder Wheel. They not only won their borough, they were also chosen as the overall winner and the most unique.
"I feel like Beyonce at the Grammy's," Caliendo joked as she held four gingerbread man-shaped awards with Dibiase.
The pair made a great team because Caliendo had been baking cookies for years after being inspired by Martha Stewart's show and Dibiase is a restaurant owner with an engineering degree, which explains how they got the ferris wheel to stand strong.
"Looking at the ferris wheel itself in real life gives us the clues on things we have to do to make it strong," Dibiase said. "We drove that all the way from Freehold, New Jersey, in the back of the pickup truck. That's a testament to how strong that thing is."
Caliendo later told NBC New York that Dibiase forgot to mention he also built a rig inside the truck to keep the gingerbread Coney Island from falling apart had they struck a pothole on their way to the city.
When asked whether the bakers had any advice for people looking to make their own gingerbread house, they all had the same answer: overbake your gingerbread.
"I find using melted sugar or isomalt is really helpful because you just pour it down the side, you stick, and then they stay," Kailee Moore, who created the St. Francis Xavier, added.
But most importantly? Have some holiday fun while decorating the gingerbread house with your family.
"Gingerbread NYC: Borough Bake-off" will be on display at the Museum of the City of New York until Jan. 12, 2025. On Wednesdays, admissions are free for New Yorkers.
Jennifer Vazquez contributed to this report.
