The Broadmoor's epic life-sized gingerbread display is a sweet science

Midway through November, a sketch rested with other papers and plans in a kitchen of The Broadmoor.

This was a rough blueprint for a boat to be built. The boat, like one historically drifting across the famed resort’s lake, would be close to 16 feet long and 4 feet wide.

And made out of gingerbread.

Green, fragrant biscuits lined several trays in another kitchen — key, decorative building blocks. They were rectangular, like tiles. They were perfectly uniform in shape and size, Executive Pastry Chef Franck Labasse pointed out.

“Perfect, just right,” he said.

Precisely right for a precise, cherished work of art.

That’s the annual, life-size gingerbread display at The Broadmoor: truly a work of art beloved by locals and visitors every holiday season.

It is a work of baking and engineering genius that plays out behind the scenes before awe-struck guests arrive at the hotel’s festive mezzanine.

In a tradition dating to the 1960s, the massive attraction takes the floor from Thanksgiving through the new year. To thank for it is a team of confectioners and carpenters — minds concerned with the sweet and scientific sides of construction.

“On the front side, there’s a bit of a think tank on what we want to showcase,” said Justin Miller, The Broadmoor’s executive chef.

It is a process of math and imagination, a process of deciding what is appealing and feasible. It is a self-imposed challenge every year, Miller said.

“We always like to raise the bar,” he said.

Enter this year’s boat, captained by Santa and topped by a candy cane- and gumdrop-adorned canopy. It’s a nod to the Lightning Bug boats seen drifting across Cheyenne Lake not long after The Broadmoor opened in 1918.

Santa is joined by his helpers on the gingerbread vessel. The chocolate elves combine for about 150 pounds of the silky, in-house recipe, Labasse estimated — not counting loads of more chocolate forming the boat’s interior.

Those exterior gingerbread biscuits? The boat incorporates about 2,400 of them, Labasse figured. As for other design pieces?

“Oh, 3,000 macaroons, 2,000 puff pastries, 2,550 meringues,” Labasse said.

Hundreds of pounds of flour, sugar and molasses go into the creation every year, along with troves of eggs, butter and holiday spice. More than 300 hours of combined staff time is required. Pastry chefs spend a few weeks designing, mixing and baking before close to another week of building.

It’s all for the fixture at the center of a special, scenic time at The Broadmoor, always aglow and decked out for Christmas. (The Broadmoor is owned by the Denver-based Anschutz Corp., whose Clarity Media Group owns The Gazette.)

The gingerbread display has become something of “a landmark” at the hotel, Miller said. “It’s really become a destination for people.”

It started smaller; The Broadmoor maintains an image of a fairly typical gingerbread house from 1964.

When he started at the resort about 25 years ago, Miller recalled chefs contributing their own houses for a village of sorts.

A life-size house was built in 2013, marking the shift to today’s epic proportions and calories. (That year saw an addition to the Guinness World Records: A team in Texas crafted a gingerbread house spanning 2,520 square feet.)

The Broadmoor unveiled “The Wilderness Experience” in 2015 — a gingerbread replica of the resort’s fish camp in the mountains. Next came a train of The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. The years have seen the Pauline Chapel, the soaring hotel itself and founder Spencer Penrose’s old Cadillac.

The years have seen the displays featured in an annual list by Historic Hotels of America. The agency regularly honors gingerbread ambitions seen in grand halls across the country — in Santa Fe’s La Fonda, San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel and Chicago’s Palmer House, to name a few.

Cookie-walled houses are commonly traced to early 19th-century Germany, inspired by the forested abode found in “Hansel and Gretel.” Americans have taken the displays to new heights. Labasse was quite familiar in his native France.

Yes, long before donning The Broadmoor chef’s hat, he knew about the hotel’s tradition. He often hears about it from friends all over the culinary world.

“They always ask me every time this year what it is going to be,” Labasse said. “They have to wait to find out.”

As do his kids. They’re getting older, teenagers now, but their reaction is still that of enchanted toddlers, Labasse said.

“They’re like, ‘How do you do that?’”