Giant gingerbread village unveiled in NYC

STORY: Location: New York City

This 'gingerbread village' has around 4,000 pounds of icing

700 houses

4,000 pounds of candy

1,000 pounds of gingerbread

6,000 egg whites

It was all made by this guy

[Jon Lovitch, Artist and creator / Gingerbread Lane]

“So what's behind me - or by definition, I'm standing in the middle of - is the largest gingerbread village in the world. We have multiple Guinness World Records. This year is not exactly big enough to compete for the Guinness World Record for the number of houses, but it is big enough to compete for the Guinness World Record for square footage. So, if we get a wild hare between now and the 15th of January, we may make a run at another Guinness World Record with this.”

The executive chef-turned-artist works from home

He does all his baking in his kitchen in Queens, New York

“I was an executive chef for a long time. I was executive chef at the Plaza Hotel, the Algonquin Hotel. And this is actually more work in terms of hours and effort and that sort of thing. But every square inch of that work until the season starts is from home. So for ten and a half months, I work out of my house and it takes a toll on my kitchen, quite frankly. It wrecks my kitchen, and then my basement is my workshop and it's a real good-sized basement. And if I can get 2000 houses down there, clearly it's big."

“Gingerbread Lane has a real nice escapist quality. You can come here and look at this, and for that brief moment you're going to forget about your mortgage or politics or Aaron Judge or whatever is driving you crazy, because this will take you away from it for a few minutes. And we have people that come times, look at it five, ten, 15, 20 minutes, and they really enjoy it. It's a great feeling for me to know that I'm responsible for creating that feeling of happiness.”