In 2009, I received The Gingerbread Architect as a gift. It’s a great book, and it comes with recipes and ingredients for 12 different gingerbread masterpieces. Since then I’ve made a number of gingerbread houses, including Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in 2012, Waterfront Station in 2020, Irving House in 2021, and The Hermitage Winter Palace in 2022.

My inspiration this year is the Fort Langley Community Hall. The town hall is an historic heritage building in the picturesque and romantic downtown of Fort Langley. Construction on this building finished in 1931. If the building looks familiar, it has appeared in a number of movies and TV shows, including a half dozen Hallmark movies. A city girl returns to her small town roots, and the local carpenter .. oh you haven’t seen that one?

The design fairly closely replicates the original building, just squished for scale. The decorations included fondant for the siding, and sour strips for the gabled front of the building, and roof shingles. The same sour strips provided the red brick work on the chimney stacks.