Hotel Captain Cook’s gingerbread village is back — with help from a new generation

Inside Hotel Captain Cook’s lobby in downtown Anchorage, it’s Christmas as usual. Poinsettias line countertops, garland dips from the ceilings and windows, and in the back corner by the elevators, white-coated student chefs pipe 50 pounds of frosting around about a dozen gingerbread houses.

“Oh my!” said 7-year-old tourist Gloria Hou from Riverside, California, when she laid eyes on the 44-square-foot village chefs were assembling Wednesday morning.

Her eyes caught and stayed on the candy detailing — gumdrop-adorned roofs and Necco Wafer cobblestones. “It’s impossible! So many candy.”

For first-time visitors like Gloria, the gingerbread village is spectacular. But also, for hotel staff and locals, it’s a relief.

After retired pastry chef and hotel co-owner Joe Hickel concluded his 45-year tradition of building a gingerbread village in the hotel’s lobby last year, locals and returning visitors braced for a holiday season without downtown’s signature gingerbread village. Then University of Alaska Anchorage culinary students took over.

A legacy inherited

In August, Hotel Captain Cook general manager Raquel Edelen approached Kellie Puff, a UAA Culinary Arts associate professor and pastry chef, with a request. Would she and her students keep the gingerbread village tradition alive?

The village had become a cultural landmark in Anchorage. Hickel grew the project every year since 1978, ending with a whopping 270-square-foot creation of gingerbread, icing and candy. In order to pull it off, he said, he began prepping each July.

“I was like: ‘yes,’ after a brief pause of thinking, ‘can I really do this?’” Chef Puff said. “It’s kind of like every pastry chef’s dream, to do something of this size.”

Puff and her team of seven staff and students got started in October, planning a village less than a quarter of the size of their predecessor’s. They spent six hours each Monday cutting out stencils, making 30 sheets of gingerbread, and eventually decorating the homes.

What they lacked in size, Puff said they tried to make up for in detailing.

The village has 11 houses, two bridges and a pond made of a shiny sugar derivative called isomalt. Each home is lit from within with plug-in LED lights threaded through holes in the table. Upside-down ice cream cones piped in green icing appear as trees throughout the edible neighborhood.

While a few of Hickel’s design elements were incorporated into Puff’s planning, she said she thought it was better to infuse new life into the project.

“I don’t want to try to re-create what he’s done, because it was very near and dear to him,” Puff said. “It felt like it would be better just to go in a new direction this year, and see how this evolves.”

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From left, students Evangelina Chandler, Tia Patrick, and Paislee Harbour decorate gingerbread houses on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024 at the University of Alaska Anchorage culinary arts department. (Loren Holmes / ADN)

Each student and staff member personalized their own gingerbread house. Tia Patrick, an advanced bakery student, drew inspiration from the board game Candy Land. Paislee Harbour, another culinary student, designed hers as a “love shack” with heart-shaped windows. Samantha Wagner, a staff member and UAA culinary program graduate, made hers into a log cabin using pretzel rods.

Puff built what she called “Nonna’s house,” which she planned to show her 2-year-old grandson. Part of the project’s motivation, she said, is to create Christmas magic for him.

It’s also to showcase the talent of her staff and students.

“It’s a great opportunity for the program,” Puff said. “To showcase the students’ work, our work, and just that there is a culinary program in Anchorage.”

A new generation of bakers

Throughout Wednesday morning’s four-hour assembly process, hotel guests and employees filtered through the lobby, stopping to take photos or compliment the students’ work.

Longtime housekeeping staff member Cecilia Garaygay said she was glad to see the village alive again; she’d missed it the last few days where it normally would have been built.

“It’s neat, it’s great, to see these people step up and do this good of a job,” said the hotel’s pastry chef, Richard Schulz, who shuffled into the lobby with his morning coffee in hand to watch the production. He circled the table, remarking on students’ detailed work. “You can see the beginning of really talented future chefs.”

Schulz took over for Joe Hickel last year as the hotel’s pastry chef, and worked with him seven years prior to that on the gingerbread village. He said it didn’t feel right for his team to take over the gingerbread village — they were too close to it.

“We needed an outside group,” he said, adding that he was a graduate from the UAA culinary program himself. “So to share it with the community was a wonderful idea.”

A woman pushing her grandson in a stroller to the elevator stopped in her tracks. In town for a doctor’s appointment from Valdez, Tammy Jo Liddell arrived in Anchorage on Sunday. She said the first thing she asked was: Where’s the gingerbread village?

“This has always been our favorite thing,” Liddell told the chefs.

As students put the final touches on their houses Wednesday, a television behind them played a constant loop of a mini-documentary on Hickel’s gingerbread legacy, titled “The Gingerbread Man.” Then, Hickel himself arrived.

“You guys have fun?” Joe Hickel asked students. He walked around the table, pointing to details he admired.

“I love the log cabin. I love the trees. I love the lake: sugar?” he asked.

“Isomalt,” Puff replied, like a contestant on “The Great British Bake Off.”

Already, culinary students are planning for next year. Harbour, who will graduate in the spring and plans to move to Arizona, said she wants to fly back to participate. She plans to build a log cabin in memory of her father, who passed last month.

In the meantime, students and staff are enjoying the reactions to their current work.

“I love this!” 7-year-old visitor Gloria said, pointing to Harbour’s love shack, before moving on to admire the Christmas trees.

“Mission accomplished,” said Chef Luke Doherty, an assistant professor.