ST. LOUIS — Building a traditional gingerbread house wasn't going to cut it for Will and Dana Biermann's Christmas tradition this year. So they went bigger. Way bigger.
In honor of their recent move to St. Louis and their love for the Cardinals, the two spent their Christmas holiday building a gingerbread replica of Busch Stadium.
"We moved to St. Louis in February so we said, 'It's been a crazy year, lets do something St. Louisy,'" Dana Biermann said. "We both love the Cardinals so we thought it would be very symbolic of our first year here."
This marked the third year that Will and Dana built a gingerbread house for the holidays. They made a traditional gingerbread house from scratch two years ago and made a Japanese-style house last year that had "ninja-bread men" fighting each other.
But this year was different. After moving to St. Louis and getting married just two months ago, the couple deliberated for several days on what this year's project should be. Busch Stadium was the final decision.
Will, an aerospace engineer, imported an image of the stadium from Google Maps into his design software and designed the outer frame to scale. After a trip to the grocery store, it was time to go to work.
"Including the baking and making of the gingerbread, it was over two days," Dana said. "We made the gingerbread the night before and baked it in the morning and then started constructing it about 2 p.m. and went until about 8 or 9 p.m.
"That's the beauty of being married to an engineer. It's even to scale, at least the outside is. The height and the outside are definitely to scale. The inside is when we started taking some creative liberties so it's not as to scale but he tried to make it as precise as possible, at least for the gingerbread portion."
The couple used gingerbread for much of the outer walls and a family-sized box of graham crackers for the rest of the framing. Twizzlers Pull n' Peel licorice was used for the red seats while mini-marshmallows served as both the bases and the lights on the detailed lighting fixtures.
Mini peanut butter cups were used for the dugouts while icing and a combination of green and brown sprinkles were used for the grass and infield dirt. The Biermanns even used gold sprinkles to draw the Arch into the outfield grass just as the Cardinals grounds crew does.
Cake decor lettering was used to write "Busch Stadium" on the walls near home plate. The dimensions of the stadium are 18 inches by 18 inches and the entire project — except the foam board — is edible.
But now that it's done, the question becomes what will happen to it next?
"We might snack on it but honestly we both hate gingerbread," Dana Biermann said. "The only reason why we make it is because it's a brilliant building material. We tried to use sugar cookie last year but it didn't work, so we'll probably snack on the graham crackers. I might take it into work and let everyone snack on it."
The two have yet to think about what they might build next year, but building the stadium will be hard to top. At least they have a year to think about it.
"I have no idea," Biermann joked. "We like to do things that are topical or funny so we will probably soak up St. Louis and see if anything inspires us and then we'll go to town next year."
