Brooklyn came out on top in the third annual Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off. Well, at least a woman from Brooklyn did.
Julia Kiskie, a 38-year-old mom and pastry chef based in Midwood, won the competition this week for her edible version of the legendary Upper West Side based Dakota Apartments, according to the New York Post.
“It was a lot of long nights,” Kiskie told the outlet.
The structure was made out of 13 pounds of gingerbread cookies, gelatin sheets, and loads of whipped marshmallow pipings, the Post reported.
Kiskie’s Dakota Apartments beat out entries including the Empire State Building, a sanitation truck, Prospect Park’s Boathouse, a recreation of Yorkville, a pizza box, and subway cars.
“It was really great to see not only those iconic structures but also people thinking about what else is iconic to New York,” Jerry Gallagher, the Museum of the City of New York’s chief operating officer, said.
Gallagher said it was fun to watch young visitors get “overwhelmed” at the sugary structures, but he was particularly interested in seeing how adults interacted with the creations.
“I really enjoy watching the older adults come in because they look at the displays, and they see the buildings they know, that they grew up around, that are in their neighborhood, or there are iconic structures that they visit all the time. And they see them through somebody else’s eyes in a fun, creative way,” he said.
While there’s much history tied to the Dakota Apartments, including the murder of singer John Lennon, Kiskie said she mostly thought about how the building was constructed and built.
“I knew about that, but it was more about the history behind the actual buildings: the way they built it, how they put it together, and that it was the first building in the Upper West Side that was actually made for people to live there, because it was in the middle of nowhere. It was very interesting,” Kiskie said.
Kiskie garnered about 20 percent of the more than 11,000 votes that were cast.
“It’s just monumental. She used all of the area that we allowed her to use, and it’s tall, just like the Dakota—as well as her detail to all of the windows and the doors and the driveway,” Gallagher said. “What a lot of people can’t see is that she actually has this Christmas tree in the center of the courtyard apartment building. She just did such an amazing job. And it’s also so wintery. Everything is covered in snow and ice, and it just looks really magical.”
Kiskie said she spent about 200 hours making the gingerbread house and that she mostly worked on it after working her full-time pastry job in the city.
“I like challenge, and I like to try new things, even though I’m kind of scared to do it. But I work really good when I am challenged or under pressure,” she said.
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