The Gingerbread Architect: Recipes and Blueprints for Twelve Classic American Homes Hardcover – October 21, 2008

I bought this book several years ago, after many years of decorating gingerbread houses that I put together from a standard kit. After many years, I longed for a bigger house and more of a challenge. Since I'm an Architect, I fell in love with this book immediately and HAD to buy it. I was not disappointed! I have made the Victorian farmhouse on the cover, as well as the Tudor Cottage with thatched roof. The first I decorated entirely my own way. For the Tudor, my daughters and I tried to mimic the photo from the book, as much as we could with the candy and decorations we had. Both houses came out fantastic!! The directions and patterns work extremely well. Although it's a lot of work, the final product is worth it. This year I tasked myself with a new challenge. I am trying to create a gingerbread house based on a house I recently designed for my family. I am struggling mightily with transferring the design to suitable patterns and shapes in order to create a gingerbread house. It is proving much harder than I expected. This exercise has demonstrated to me how much work must've gone into making these designs and the patterns. The book is worth every penny, and the system is foolproof if you take it step by step. I think I've bitten off more than I can chew this year. Kudos to the authors for their wonderful book and all the work that went into it! Next year I will try another one of their designs - perhaps the Second Empire Mansion.

We revisit this book for ideas and templates and now since purchasing this book- it’s a Christmas tradition. My husband grew up in Germany and has memories of the beautiful gingerbread houses with giant icicles. This book helps us continue those childhood memories for our own kids.Recipes, blueprints, and tricks of the gingerbread construction trade are all in the book. It’s fantastic! What a great gift of gingerbread memories and sneaking in a gum drop or two while constructing= family memories.Highly recommend; but roll up those gingerbread shelves for the long haul. It’s like real construction- you expect a specific timeline but then discover it’s three times the original timeline to make amazing. But it’s ALL WORTH it.PS we cheated and used red vines and sour sheets for the siding- don’t judge. We were tired and have three small kids... it was 2020. We wanted to be done. Just done.

I have been making gingerbread houses for the past 6 years. The recipe in this book is the BEST recipe i have ever used! The house patterns are detailed and accurate. There are many helpful hints that i had never learned anywhere else.

My latest book acquisition arrived today and I am so excited. Last year we designed and built a gingerbread house using the instructions from "The Professional Pastry Chef" and it was much more complicated than I had anticipated. Not hard, just complicated. Planning a design for even a simple A-frame house was very tedious, making sure everything would line up and the roof would overhang and everything. Then decorating: what candy to buy, how to use it effectively. It came out cute, but doing it again was daunting.I'm not blown away by any of the designs I see in "The Gingerbread Architect", but I am impressed by their thoroughness. They've planned out the steps, day by day, into reasonable chunks of work; they list exactly the ingredients and candies you need to recreate their designs; they have templates for exactly the pieces you need to cut out, to scale; they list alternate ideas and decor, how to adapt the style, and pitfalls they had with certain designs or decor choices. And I was impressed with some of their creative use of materials, particularly decorating with upside down ice cream cones for trees and green rice krispy treats for shrubberies.All in all, I feel a lot more sanguine about tackling this holiday craft with this book in hand.--Well, it is Christmas day and I'm still not done with this project. Where on earth do you buy hard candies these days? The recipes for the dough and the icing were similar to others I've used (Bo Frieburg) and the directions were easy to follow. I had a snafu with the pattern pieces; I had absolutely no idea that 400% larger was so big, and neither did the folks at Kinkos. With the size of the Kinkos bill, I think the pattern pages could have been laid out more efficiently. In the end, I threw out the Kinkos copies anyway, because a gingerbread house over 14" tall would overwhelm my dining room. I resized the pages to only 300% and went from there.Cut out, baking, and assembly have been moderately straightforward. I chose to do the Victorian on the book cover (my son picked it) which is a medium difficulty plan. The directions did NOT point out that I shouldn't have cut out the doors, which is annoying, since I then had to cut separate door pieces and tack them on. It was also unclear exactly how much crushed candy should be added to the window spaces and my windows look thin and lumpy.Altogether, however, it is a very handsome house and I would never have designed such a complex house on my own. My son is thrilled to bits, the air smells like gingerbread, and I didn't have to think of all the details myself. Compared to a ready-to-make kit, making a gingerbread house from scratch is a labor of love (and money). But this book did do a nice job of setting it out, step-by-step, and taking away the guesswork.

Arrived within the time line of expectancy and unharmed. I felt the book wasnt really what I wanted for my youth project; I found its easier to build than decorate but the houses in this book do both at the same time. However, I felt for myself personally, I think its fine. The instructions are in very small print and are very complicated, but the ideas and houses were fantastic.***I recommend this book for above and beyond experienced bakers.

I have made gingerbread houses for years but wanted to try something a little more detailed so, I purchased this book. I liked the house on the cover so that is the one I made this year. This book is not for gingerbread house builders that have no experience. The pieces are small and must be enlarged. There are no directions for putting it all together so, you are on your own for this but, I took it one piece at a time and it all worked out. I didn't care for the "amateurish" decorating that was used on the houses and they were very plain so, I did my own decorating.

Even if you are not considering building a gingerbread house -which I doubt once you flip through this book- you'll drool over the creativity of the authors at the examples beautifully photographed. Step by step instructions, it's just a pleasure to look at it... I would even use it for gift-giving. Must-have for architechts with the slightest interest in baking.

Brilliant! As an architect myself I LOVE this book. So clearly detailed and templates are intelligent, and scalable! I love the range of styles and the historical context. Thank you! Best ”Architecture” book in my collection! Can not wait to build our gingerbread village.

Yes, I love it! One does need much practice but doable. Definitely a book to inspire one when the christmas holidays start arriving.

Can't wait to try