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Here's an idea Sharing some holiday joy!
On a Saturday in late November, 18 Women San Diego chefs from Restaurants, Hotels, Country Clubs and the APCA joined forces in the lobby of the La Jolla Hiton Hotel to assemble a Gingerbread Village.
In all, 38 structures were assembled and decorated, including the "Snow Queen's Castle, churches, mansions and houses (including an outhouse), a Morish Palace and a southeastern adobe home complete with Saguro cacti and a buckboard made from dried persimmon slices and pretzel sticks...It is INCREDIBLE to see, and is now being displayed in the Hilton Lobby and auctioned off to support local Women's charities... I suggested that it be sold to the local Dental Association, and walled off to protect everyone's teeth here in San Diego...
I and got to know a lot of other amazing San Diego talent...needless to say we all left after almost 8 hours, covered in icing and sticky, sticky, sticky, but we all had a BLAST together and won't soon forget how good it felt to contribute our time toward a good end.
The newspaper article covering the event will be featured in the Food Section of the San Diego Union-Tribune,on December 6th and I'mk going to post some of the photos we got of the structures we built.
Unfortunately, we could only capture photos of about 1/3 of the structures since they are being displayed under a huge glass dome, and the front and opposite side of the display were under too much glare to shoot.
Just so you know...we organized the event, and donated out time and committed to the event a month in advance...the Executive Chef at the Hilton, Debra Schneider and her staff baked all of the gingerbread components and prepared MOUNDS of royal icing...we colored it, and supplied all of the candies, components and decorations, pastry bags,etc... (most of which we encouraged the local purveyors to contribute) and dove in...
What a GREAT DAY!

Here are some of the photos we promised...we could only capture about 1/3 of the structures, since the village is displayed under a huge glass dome in the lobby, and there was just too much glare on the front and opposite side of the village...sorry!

I think you'll enjoy the ones we did get:

Click here for Gingerbread Pix

Candy