TORONTO -- With more people sticking to family time indoors this holiday season, gingerbread house construction is primed for a boost in popularity.

Just ask Beatriz Muller, owner of Cakes by Beatriz in Innisfil, Ont., who’s already seeing candy stores running low on supplies.

“I think everybody is just binge-buying the candies to make gingerbread houses,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “I don’t what's going on, but there's no candies around.”

Muller is perennial contender at the National Gingerbread House Competition held annually in Asheville, N.C. She finished second place in 2019 with “Perspective,” a collection of several homes mashed together at different angles inspired by Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher’s “Relativity,” a collection of artwork depicting seemingly impossible architecture.

“The house is my interpretation of it,” she said. “Inside each house there are people living. There are kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms. You see all the daily life of people, yet every house is facing in different directions… I would say it's like a surreal universe where everybody lives in the same space, yet nobody’s aware of the other.”

In total, it took 50 hours to design the blueprint of the house and another 500 hours to build it, she added.

“It's pretty complicated to fit all those houses,” she said. “I did have to put extra care about this structure because these pieces, they have to travel 1,500 kilometres.”

Some of her other works include a 1.8-metre tall recreation of New York City’s Columbus Circle, complete with a working subway, a grand-prize winning “dream house” in 2016 and a miniature Mercedes G-Class wagon for a Christmas commercial last year.

While Muller is an expert in building gingerbread houses, she understands they can be a sometimes frustrating endeavour, particularly when using the kits sold at the grocery store. Here are some of Muller’s tips for creating a great (and upright) gingerbread house using a store-bought kit:

GRATE THE EDGES OF YOUR WALL AND ROOF PIECES

Muller said the number one tip for beginners is to grate the edges of your wall and roof pieces until they are flat and symmetrical.

She said a lot of times the edges become rounded in the baking process and companies don’t file them down, making it harder for them to stick together once it’s time to build.

“When some of the pieces are really bad, you’ll have a hard time gluing the pieces together,” she said. “Grab a cheese grater or nut greater -- any grater that you have at home -- and you just grate the edges until they’re straight on the both sides of the house … so they fit just perfect.” 

MIX IN SOME WATER WITH THE ICING

Muller said the icing that comes with the kit often dries too quickly, making it hard to build with, but you can add a few drops of water to make it easier to work with.

“It dries too fast and it doesn't allow the gingerbread to absorb the humidity and glue,” she said. “The secret would be to put (icing) in a container, empty the bag in a container, add few drops of water and stir it until it has the consistency of mayonnaise, more or less.”

If the icing is too runny, it can still be used, but it will take longer to dry, she said.

Muller adds that buying an extra package of icing is a good idea, as the kit often does not provide quite enough icing if things go slightly wrong.

DECORATE THE WALLS AND ROOF BEFORE BUILDING

Muller said it’s important to decorate the walls and the roof before trying to assemble it, so you make it look nice on a flat surface, rather than trying to decorate while it’s upright.

“Try to do it flat on the table before gluing it, because it's hard to work on when the house is standing up, especially if you want to just do a trim to a window or a door,” she said. “This is what all professionals do.” 

USE CANS OR BOXES TO KEEP EVERYTHING UPRIGHT

In competition, all support beams in a gingerbread house must be edible and judges will drill into a house to make sure it’s abiding by the rules, but Muller said cans and boxes inside the house make for the perfect invisible support for a more recreational house, even if they’re only used while it dries.  

“I use food boxes, cans, cans of soup or whatever, to help it just keep the walls together until it dries or until it settles,” she said.

PREPARE FOR AN ALL-DAY ACTIVITY

Muller said a common misconception among those making a gingerbread house is that people assume it will only take a couple hours to finish, when in reality it should be considered as an all-day activity.

“Take your time, take maybe the whole day,” she said. “You do something in the morning, a little bit in the morning, after lunch is something else and then you finish it before dinner time or even after dinner time.” 

She added that pieces should be left for two hours to dry, especially before putting the roof on top.

“Let them dry, go for a glass of wine, just take some time,” she said. “When I have orders for houses, it takes a whole week.”