Jason Reaves doesn’t use brick and mortar, but he’s still built a village.

With more than 150 pounds of gingerbread, and 100 pounds of frosting, the executive pastry chef at Market Salamander, in Middleburg, designed and built a miniature gingerbread town for the restaurant’s display window. Market Salamander is owned by Sheila Johnson, founder of the entertainment network BET, and president of the women’s basketball team, the Washington Mystics.

The village, which comprises a firehouse, a Christmas tree, a mill, a train and tracks, and a few retail shops, took nearly two weeks to create.
But Reaves said he designed the gingerbread village more for the sake of art than for the construction.

“I wanted to incorporate art into food, and not be a starving artist,” he said.

First, Reaves sketched the size and shape of the buildings onto poster board. Then he rolled out the gingerbread dough before cutting it around a poster board stencil. Hint – Reaves cuts the dough a tad larger than the stencil because gingerbread shrinks when heated. The gingerbread baked for 20 minutes, and then was trimmed around the stencil mold again for accurate measure. It cooled overnight and is decorated with icing, poured sugar, and rolled fondant, and then airbrushed with colors and shimmer gloss.

“I don’t do a lot of traditional candies. I don’t want it to look like Candyland,” he said.

The key to a successful gingerbread village, he said, is time management. For the past five years, Reaves has designed his gingerbread creations on his own time, on nights and weekends.

Although the gingerbread village is edible, Reaves declines offers to sell it. Instead, he offers advice to amateur gingerbread bakers: Plan ahead and make templates.

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Executive pastry chef Jason Reaves puts finishing touches on his gingerbread village at Market Salamander in Middleburg.