Gingerbread Bake-Off Stars LandmarksThat Are Good Enough to Eat

The holidays are upon us, and the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) has you covered. For the fourth consecutive year, Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off is on view, through Jan. 19. It’s a showcase for fragrant homages to the city’s landmarks, buildings, neighborhoods, places, and things.

It’s a sweet tradition in a city teeming with holiday traditions, but none quite so flavorful as the baked sculptures here. This year’s theme, “Iconic New York,” inspired edible submissions from professional and amateur bakers across the five boroughs who responded to an open call from MCNY. Each entrant crafted a work entirely in gingerbread (minus the base)—with frosting, gumdrops, and candied embellishments to boot—capturing the essence of a borough, a neighborhood, a community, the city itself.

On a recent Saturday afternoon when Straus News stopped by, the highly aromatic gallery on the first floor was crowded with visitors quietly marveling at the intricacy and sheer majesty of the displays. The Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge (with Santa and reindeer navigating the crossing) mix with the Chrysler Building, the Hotel Chelsea, the Staten Island Lighthouse, the Rockettes, Brooklyn brownstones, the Christopher Street-Stonewall subway station, and a very whimsical evocation of Broadway (“There’s No Business Like Dough Business”). Sending regards to Elphaba, Annie, and the cast of Cats.

Awards were doled out in early November by a panel of six judges, including Bobbie Lloyd of Magnolia Bakery and Melba Wilson of Melba’s in Harlem. The categories ranged from “Best Borough Spirit” and “Most Unique” to “Most Realistic” and “Good Enough to Eat.”

The prize for “Best Overall” confection was awarded to the expansive Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn, a highly unusual submission by the mad-talented baker Kate Sigrist, described in the exhibit label as “a compulsive maker [who] has never met a topic that she can’t turn into an all-encompassing, living-room-devouring project.”

But Lady Liberty, standing almost three feet tall and weighing in at 24 pounds (with pedestal and base), took the cake for Best Borough Spirit in Straus News’s home borough, Manhattan, and is given pride of place at the show’s entrance.

Its creators, César Aldrete, a chef and food stylist, and Ricky Rotandi, a preschool teacher on the Upper East Side, are partners in life and winners of Season 36 of “The Amazing Race,” the reality TV competition show. They share an apartment in Hamilton Heights, where they turned their second bedroom into “a gingerbread factory,” Aldrete told Straus News in an interview.

Once the couple’s design was approved by MCNY in early October, they had just three weeks to craft the work and install it in the gallery. They used an Uber to transport their creation, which arrived in four pieces—the statue, the pedestal (in two parts), and the plywood base.

“It was 25 minutes of a nervous ride,” Aldrete admitted.

The statue itself has an interior structure made of Rice Krispies Treats coated in chocolate, with an overlayer of gingerbread clay, an ingredient that has the consistency of Play-Doh and is a mix of pulverized gingerbread and some additives to make it pliable and dry. Two food colorings, petal dust and luster dust, were used to approximate the statue’s green patina.

“I had not seen anyone using gingerbread clay before on these exhibits. So when we decided on the statue, we wanted to do that, just to show something different,” said Aldrete, a two-time MCNY gingerbread competitor, who crafted The Met Cloisters in 2023.

Collaborator Ricky Rotandi, a self-described “home baker,” also noted that no contestant had ever made a stand-alone Lady Liberty at this scale, which added to the challenge. He crafted the roughly 50 figures that dot the sculpture and its base and speak to everyone.

“I hand-piped them all with royal icing [hard icing], and each one is different. There’s no two that look alike. I was trying to make sure the crowd was as diverse as possible. People can come in, and if they look closely, they can say, ‘Oh, that looks like me.’ I just wanted people to be able to see themselves in the structure.”

So look closely for a wheelchair user, a person wearing a hijab, a Black ballerina on a photoshoot, and, in a fun twist, Waldo from the Where’s Waldo? books, plus the creators themselves, César and Ricky. Calling Alfred Hitchcock, famous for popping up in his own films.

“We think that the Statue of Liberty needs to be in the spotlight right now. I feel we can all use a reminder of what the Statue of Liberty stands for—you know, freedom, liberty, and hope,” Aldrete said. “It’s an icon of New York that is not only for New Yorkers. It’s for everyone that comes and visits.”

Alluding to the broken shackles and chains at the feet of the statue, reimagined here in gingerbread, Rotandi added: “We wanted to highlight what she stands for—that everyone has, or should have, the ability to have freedom and liberty and a sense of hope that wherever you come from, you can make it through whatever you are going through.”

Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off, Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave., at 103rd Street, through Jan. 19