This year's 400-pound showpiece has working lights, four fully furnished rooms, a replica of the Kitchen Garden, First Dog Bo, and a Christmas forest...
Were he alive today, White House architect James Hoban might be stunned to discover that his most famous building is annually re-created in gingerbread for Christmas at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The tradition became a yearly part of holiday celebrations when Roland Mesnier, who ruled the pastry kitchen for more than a quarter of a century, made houses each Christmas during the Carter Administration. Mesnier's houses became more and more elaborate over the ensuing Presidencies, but his successor, Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses, has taken the building project to a whole new level. All five of Yosses' White House Gingerbread Houses have been covered in white chocolate, and the 2011 house is his best and most detailed effort yet.
Every element is edible, with the exception of the working electric lighting that's inside and outside. There are four interior rooms, a model of First Lady Michelle Obama's Kitchen Garden and beehive, First Dog Bo, and a forest of Christmas trees. Displayed on a marble-topped console table in the State Dining Room throughout the holiday season, the house is a showstopper that delights children and adults.
Yosses (l) first came to the White House at the invitation of First Lady Laura Bush for the 2006 holiday season. But he built his first Gingerbread House for Christmas 2007; Mesnier came out of retirement specifically to do the 2006 house, Yosses told Obama Foodorama. "What a relief!" Yosses added; the idea of building such a grand project during his debut months was apparently a bit daunting, even for someone who was already an acclaimed pastry chef, hailed for work that was described as "unfailingly elegant, restrained and imaginative."
Each of Yosses' three houses for President Obama and Mrs. Obama have all been the same view of the South Portico because "it got great feedback," Yosses said.
The pastry master references copies of Hoban's original building sketches as he works. The white chocolate architectural details, such as columns, banisters, and rosettes, are poured in special molds, and are historically accurate. Yosses began his culinary career while living in France, and was mentored by Pierre Herme, the nation's premier pastry chef. It was then that he learned the arts of chocolate decor and sugar blowing. (Above: A view of the left side of the house)
Building the White House Gingerbread House takes months, and Assistant Pastry Chef Susie Morrison acts as "general contractor." The gingerbread was baked in late September, in order to allow it to go stale and become hard. It's more than an inch thick, and so hard a band saw is used to cut the walls and roof, Yosses said. The recipe is the same used for the White House Gingerbread Cookies, but on a far larger scale.
The project is a group effort for White House staff that extends beyond the pastry kitchen. The house is assembled in the China Room, a ground-floor room where presidential china is displayed year-round in lit cabinets (the room is currently being used for the holiday tour, and features a Christmas dinner table set with the Clinton State China).
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