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Photos by Asia Morris.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Master Gingerbread House Maker Isaac Salgado has done it again. And by \u201cit,\u201d we mean spending nearly 300 hours carefully creating and constructing very possibly the largest gingerbread village you\u2019ll see in Long Beach this holiday season. Last year, Salgado built “the best dang gingerbread house in Long Beach<\/a>,” which was displayed at DOMA in downtown.\u00a0<\/p>\n Located at MADE in Long Beach, the mountainous sugary wonder was truly a labor of love, created to promote an upcoming event planned by the Willmore City Heritage Association (WCHA), its fifth annual\u00a0Winter in Willmore,<\/em> to take place on Saturday, December 19, from 1:00PM to 5:00PM at Drake Park.<\/p>\n Each gingerbread house takes about 10 hours from start to completion, including the baking of the gingerbread, the decorating and the assembling (and the shopping for ingredients). Salgado took on the project toward the end of September and finished, finally, the weekend before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year we used about 300 pounds of powdered sugar alone,\u201d said Salgado. \u201cEverything is edible except the train, the grass it’s sitting on and the wood frame itself.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the gingerbread craftsman, the most difficult parts of the process include knowing how to temper the chocolate and getting the temperature of the sugar just right. If either of these edible elements are too hot or too cold, the pieces will refuse to harden or will crystallize, creating an unwanted texture and an unstable structure. The biggest challenge, however, is making sure that the gingerbread itself can support hundreds of pounds of candy and icing for two and a half months.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to get the icing at the right consistency, the sugar at the right consistency so it can actually hold up for two and a half months,\u201d Salgado said. \u201cIt\u2019s been at MADE since the Monday before Thanksgiving, and it\u2019s holding up very, very well. We plan to keep making it bigger every year\u2026 We\u2019ll see how far it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n The seven-foot-long, seven-foot-tall village at MADE is the second largest gingerbread creation Salgado has painstakingly constructed. Before he started his own business, Rug\u2019it Cleaning<\/a>, he worked for a country club with a team that spent weeks laboring over, let\u2019s say, a full-on gingerbread city, measuring over 20 feet long and nearly 20 feet tall. Salgado couldn\u2019t shake the gingerbread house-making tradition and continued the artful practice for the Long Beach community.<\/p>\n As a board member of the WCHA, Salgado said he will be attending the Winter in Willmore event to show kids how to build and decorate their own gingerbread houses.<\/p>\n \u201cI do a lot of food art,\u201d he said. \u201cFood carvings, ice carvings and of course, gingerbread houses and things like that so I want to make sure everyone understands that they can have fun with food.\u201d<\/p>\n The gingerbread village at MADE will be up until the first week of January, so don\u2019t forget to stop by the local Pine Avenue boutique before it’s taken down.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"DSC](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/DSC_0751.JPG\")
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