Gingerbread City

An exhibition at the V&A museum

Six steps to designing, baking and building an ideal city of the future, for the Museum of Architecture's Gingerbread City exhibition at the V&A. We worked alongside Foster & Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects and in collaboration with Stirling Prize-winner Haworth Tompkins and Pitman Tozer

Working alongside Foster & Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, LGA has helped imagine, design and build an ideal city of the future – out of gingerbread. Hosted by the V&A, the 2018 edition of the Gingerbread City envisions an ideal ‘future city’. This includes urban farmland, a liquorice cable car and sugar cycle paths, and was in part built by robot.

LGA secured one of 71 plots, masterplanned to include the city farm’s entrance pavilion and learning centre, collaborating with neighbours Stirling Prize-winner Haworth Tompkins and Pitman Tozer. The three practices are also working together at the innovative mixed-use scheme Fish Island Village, in east London.

We worked with Ottolenghi pastry chef Monika Kos to create a soft and spicy, yet structurally sound gingerbread recipe, available here. You can vote for your favourite structure here.

Ingredients

• 5 tbsp water
• 210 g white caster or light brown sugar
• 3 tbsp golden syrup light batch only
• 250g salted butter cold and diced
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 560g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

Method

Begin by placing in a deep saucepan the water, brown sugar, treacle, golden syrup, ground ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Bring the mixture to the boil over a medium heat, stirring continuously.

Remove from the heat and gradually add the diced butter. Stir until combined. Add the bicarbonate of soda – take care as the mixture will swell up. Leave to cool to room temperature. Once cool, transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Sift in the flour and slowly mix together until combined into a uniform and slightly wet dough. Wrap in cling film, flatten it with the palm of your hand and refrigerate until firm. It will take 2/3 hours.  Place the dough within two sheets of baking paper and roll it out with the rolling pin until about 5–6mm thick. Cut the biscuits as described in the “tips” section, place the biscuits onto the silicon mat and chill again in the fridge (or in the freezer) until firm, for approximately half an hour.

Before putting the biscuits into the oven, make a hole by pressing a straw onto their surface: don’t lift them, just press the straw onto the biscuit to create the hole. Pre-heat the oven to 200° C and bake the biscuits for 8–10 minutes, taking care to make them crunchy by cooking them another two minutes with the door of the oven slightly open. While they are still hot, give better definition to the hole by pressing again the straw in it