Some places are like people: some shine and some don't.

December 24, 2015 9:02 AM

My family made a gingerbread rendition of the Overlook Hotel from Kubrick's "The Shining, complete with a rice crispie treat maze and interior rooms depicting famous scenes (SL reddit)
posted by roomthreeseventeen (31 comments total)

YOU WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THESE PICTURES, PEOPLE. I cannot stress enough just how much you want to take a look at these pictures.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:09 AM on December 24, 2015 [15 favorites]

I don't want to detract in any way from the incredible talent and creativity behind this project, but man was I hoping for a gingerbread version of the costumed blowjob shot.
posted by Bromius at 9:15 AM on December 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

You should see my gingerbread Apollo 11 Command Module.
posted by davebush at 9:16 AM on December 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Holy shit. They even did carpeting and pictures on the walls. The only thing missing is the tusked fellatio cutaway with the bear costume.
posted by benzenedream at 9:17 AM on December 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jinx. Christmas eve and everyone's thinking of bear blowjobs!
posted by benzenedream at 9:18 AM on December 24, 2015 [16 favorites]

Construction of the gingerbread house started in 1907. It was finished in 1909. The site is supposed to be located on an Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it.
posted by Fizz at 9:19 AM on December 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Overworking and no glaze makes Jack a dull cookie.
posted by oflinkey at 9:34 AM on December 24, 2015 [11 favorites]

There's a meta element to this that I can't quite put my finger on, something about being cooped up all winter with family and obsessively crafting a very detailed fictionally enhanced gingerbread hotel.

I understand this is also the reason the Swiss excel at watch-making.
posted by notyou at 9:37 AM on December 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Do you serve red rum with this dish?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:42 AM on December 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

They say they make one every year, I want to see the earlier gingerbread sets.
posted by jeather at 9:46 AM on December 24, 2015

Somewhere, Scatman Carothers is craving Rice Crispies.
posted by dr_dank at 9:51 AM on December 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Come bake with us, Danny
For 8-10 minutes at 350°
And ever and ever...
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:19 AM on December 24, 2015 [14 favorites]

This is good. Thanks!
posted by shelleycat at 10:30 AM on December 24, 2015

This is the greatest gingerbread achievement ever. And finally someone found a legitimate use for quinoa!
posted by Flannery Culp at 10:34 AM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whenever I see incredible things like this that people somehow manage to create, my inner creative-wannabe always asks myself, "What the hell are you doing with your life?" But I know that if I ever actually built an insanely elaborate gingerbread house or similar, my inner practical-pessimist would look at it and ask myself the same thing.
posted by gatorae at 10:41 AM on December 24, 2015 [16 favorites]

You're gonna need a bigger boat oven!
posted by shakespeherian at 10:41 AM on December 24, 2015

Also came in to request fellating bears.
posted by yhbc at 10:43 AM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

we definitely had that scene high on our list, we just ran out of time and gingerbread.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:45 AM on December 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

We've got quinoa and jolly ranchers, edible wallpaper and carpets, twenty cans of condensed milk, food coloring, brown sugar, Rice Krispies, flour… and unsalted butter. You got a dozen jugs of black molasses, we got two pounds of candied ginger, thirty twelve-pound bags of icing sugar … now we got ground cloves, cinnamon, white pepper, nutmeg and allspice.

~How'd you like some eggnog, Doc? ~
posted by benzenedream at 11:00 AM on December 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

!setebaid
posted by clavdivs at 11:31 AM on December 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

we definitely had that scene high on our list, we just ran out of time and gingerbread.

You have no idea how tired I am of hearing this excuse.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:10 PM on December 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

What I appreciate is that it's the entire family who is committed to this.
posted by yueliang at 12:14 PM on December 24, 2015

The only thing missing is the tusked fellatio cutaway with the bear costume.

I think I've only seen 'the shining' edited for broadcast TV, which I guess means I saw a very different movie...
posted by ennui.bz at 12:16 PM on December 24, 2015

Whoa, the blood candy is beautiful, especially with how it's lit. I would love to see a 1000x scaled up version of that scene with sugar candy.
posted by yueliang at 12:16 PM on December 24, 2015

What I appreciate is that it's the entire family who is committed to this.

My girls, sir...
They didn't care for the Gingerbread Overlook at first.
One of them actually stole a rolling pin and tried to knock it down.
But I corrected them, sir...
And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty...
I corrected her.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:22 PM on December 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'm in awe. Some more interesting details:

- What do you guys do for a living?
- My mom's a kindergarten teacher, my dad works in the cell phone industry, and my two older twin brothers are independent filmmakers and I'm a student!

- Do you guys actually eat it? Is it even edible?
- The lights aren't edible, but almost everything else is (the base is made of styrofoam and the clear windows for the vignettes are glass). That being said, you probably wouldn't want to eat it. Our frosting recipe dries hard as rock and after being built for the better part of 2 weeks it's already quite stale!

- Do you just keep them as decoration once they're finished?
- Yeah! We keep them for several months until they start to fall apart!

- Wow, that's amazing... how long did it take all together?
- It took about 2 weeks with working on it on and off. Most days we only worked a few hours on it (though each of the five interior rooms took a full day each) but in the last 3 days we worked on it basically nonstop. It was a lot of work, but we're happy with how it turned out!

- Is it bad that the first thing that comes to mind is how awesome it would be to destroy it?
- We make a gingerbread house every year, and for the first few years we used to destroy it in crazy ways after a couple months. One year we dropped it off a balcony and filmed it in slow motion, and another year we stuck fireworks in it and blew it up!

- Do you come from a family of professional bakers? Is this gonna go on display in some bakery, or do you guys just do this all for the fun of it?
- We just do it for fun!

(even more in awe now)
posted by bitteschoen at 1:18 PM on December 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

In the immortal words of the great prophet Keanu, "whoa".
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:49 PM on December 24, 2015

Some people have way too much time on their hands. And that's a good thing.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:14 PM on December 24, 2015

Some people have just the right amount of time on their hands.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:07 PM on December 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Isn't the layout of the Overlook in The Shining geometrically impossible? How would you pull that off in gingerbread?
posted by jonp72 at 4:27 PM on December 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

You have to get the special non-Euclidean gingerbread mix.
posted by um at 7:52 AM on December 26, 2015