All Photos By Gail

As a fun and innovative way to celebrate the 2022 Holiday Season, the Museum of the City of New York invited top bakeries and amateur bakers from across the city to enter Gingerbread New York City: the Great Burrough Bake-Off – the museum’s first-ever holiday event aimed at honoring the communities in each of the five boroughs. Select bakers created their own unique gingerbread display to represent their respective neighborhoods, inspired by the theme Winter in New York. A group of prominent New York City-based bakers, curators, and restaurant owners judged the final designs.

Prizes were then awarded in a variety of categories, including Most Representative of their Neighborhood, Most Creative, Good Enough to Eat, Most Intricate, Grandest, and more. A selection of the winning scenes were on display at the museum through January 8th — sorry if you missed it! I was lucky enough to sneak in a visit on New Year’s Eve, and was most impressed with this Gingerbread Scene featured here, submitted by Egidio Pastry Shop in the Bronx.

Egidio Pastry Shop opened in 1912  on East 187th Street near Arthur Avenue and has been there ever since. The recipes of the original owner and founder Don Pasquale Egidio, a southern Italian immigrant, are still in use today.

For the competition, Maria Carmela Lucciola, current owner of Egidio pastry shop, decided to build a classic gingerbread house, following the Italian tradition for the holiday season. Entitled “Jingle in Ginger! their gingerbread house diorama is festively Christmas themed with lots of fun details.

Look! It’s Santa!

Follow Egidio Pastry Shop on Instagram at @EgidoPastryShop.