About London Gingerbread

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I made my first gingerbread house almost by accident. I had always wanted to try one when an unexpected email arrived inviting me to enter a gingerbread competition at the Ideal Home Show. Having never actually made one before, I said yes.

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I built a tiny gingerbread bakery, complete with an interior, miniature details and lighting. It won first place, and I was hooked.

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At the time, I had already spent years creating highly detailed sculpted cakes through my business, Canvas Cake Company. Gingerbread brought together many of the things I loved most about that work with a longstanding fascination with buildings and architecture. Over the following years, the projects became increasingly ambitious, from recreating real homes and shopfronts to illuminated buildings and intricate miniature worlds.

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My approach is surprisingly low-tech. I often begin with little more than photographs, a ruler, pencil and cardboard, working out proportions and construction by eye before translating the design into gingerbread. I particularly love solving the tiny details: how to recreate a distinctive window, engrave a shop fascia or hide a light inside a building.

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Wherever possible, I keep the materials simple too. Gingerbread and royal icing do most of the work. For me, part of the beauty is being able to look at an elaborate finished piece and still unmistakably see the gingerbread it was made from.

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After more than five years of creating increasingly elaborate gingerbread alongside a decade of edible cake design, London Gingerbread was created to give this work a home of its own.