Any number of things can go wrong on a job site, but few homebuilders have had to deal with melting roofs or trades who eat the construction materials.
For the holiday homebuilders whose "contractors" erect homes from gingerbread, chocolate and other sugary treats, those are bittersweet problems.
Crafty crews have built a number of life-size houses this season—out of desserts.
15 feet of sweet
Perhaps the country’s largest gingerbread houses are open for business at a dozen Great Wolf Lodge water parks around the country. Some of the candy-and-cookie-clad structures are 15 feet tall.
The whimsical, edible (sort of) houses are big enough inside to fit a table for six. Groups that want to dine there pay for their food and pony up a $10 sitting fee, which the indoor resort donates to Ronald McDonald House charities.
The made-from scratch building materials for each home-baked house include 5,000 candies, 600 pounds of gingerbread dough and more than a ton of sugar.
The New York Times reported that it took six pastry chefs 1,200 hours to apply 750 pounds of icing, 200 pounds of Rice Krispies treats (roof shingles) and 635 handmade fondant poinsettias to the sugary structure at the resort in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.
Great Wolf Lodge began building the life-size gingerbread houses four years ago and has raised $50,000 for charity.
Watch a time-lapse video of the construction of the resort’s Kansas City’s confectionary wonder here.
Another giant gingerbread house—as big as the some of the trendy microhouses built for people to live in—can be found on the campus of Indiana University, where students involved with the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity are trying to raise $70,000 to build a real home for a local family.
The 12-foot, three-sided structure has an open front and is the largest gingerbread house in Indiana.
Visitors who helped the students build the house paid $4 apiece for bags of candy building materials. The home-sweet-home is furnished with a rocking chair and a Christmas tree.
Chocolate for a cause
Hershey’s Chocolate World in Pennsylvania is home to the country's largest chocolate house, for the sixth year.
A candy-equipped building crew built the 100-square-foot house from a ton of candy, including Jolly Rancher Crunch N Chews, Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Cream bars, Kit Kats, candy cane Kisses and lollypops, materials chosen for their color and texture.
Plans began over the summer to create a Chocolate Holiday House with a different look from those of prior years. This year’s delectable dwelling is bolstered by a plywood frame and a tough board wrap onto which its builders nailed sticky shutters and shingles—with their hands, not hammers.
Hershey’s made a donation to the Children’s Miracle Network for each hour every volunteer “builder” worked on the house, and expects to raise more than $5,000. The workers have to make constant repairs to the troubled home, which suffers from chronic roof melting.
Christmas pudding
A Devonshire, England, couple that reportedly always wanted to build their dream home has built a creamy one instead—out of discarded Christmas puddings.
Christmas pudding is a traditional English dessert made from dried fruits, eggs, fat, molasses, alcohol and spices, and often is aged for up to a year.
After Felicity Holmes discovered 17 years’ worth of unused Christmas puddings hidden away in her mother’s kitchen, she asked others to donate their forgotten desserts and expired ingredients, and she got plenty—including some that were 80-plus years old.
She and her husband, Tom, pounded the rock-hard sweets—along with some of the glass containers they came in—into thick walls and windows to create a pudding-shaped dome that meets UK standards for sustainable homes. They wrapped it in 350 feet of clingy plastic to hold it all together during construction.
After hosting a “house”-warming party, the couple reportedly will light the sticky structure on fire.