Operations Manager Jason Mann, who has past experience in the construction field, developed the idea as a way to bring some excitement around the holidays. He never imagined it would turn out this well.
“We make mini gingerbread houses in the bakery already, so I thought, ‘How cool to do a humongous one,’” Mann said.
The process began just like building a regular house. Mann said he framed the whole house and then had the bakers make up gingerbread “walls” for the exterior and five gallons of icing to pipe on as decoration.
What must a baker’s pantry include for such a task?
The gingerbread house has already been a huge hit with
customers, and word is beginning to spread to out-of-towners, too. Mann
said recently a family from Florida stopped in and made the compliment
that it was as good as those they had seen at Disney World.
Ingrid’s Kitchen is
known for its gingerbread you can eat, too, such as its little
gingerbread men and other holiday favorites like iced cut-out cookies in
the shape of snowflakes, Christmas trees, wreaths and Santas.
Mann says its most popular cake curing the holidays and year-round is chocolate decadent cake.
Customers
can visit the house during regular business hours 7 a.m.-9 p.m.
Monday-Thursday and 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. It is closed
Christmas Day but reopens Dec. 26.
The
house won’t be going away after the holidays, either. In January, it
will transition into a Valentine’s delicacy, the perfect sweet spot to
bring a sweetheart of any age. In the spring, it’ll
get remodeled as an Easter
cottage. (Might we recommend a beach house for the summer?) In addition
to the bakery, Ingrid’s Kitchen is a restaurant, bar and catering
business offering a variety of cuisine. In 1977, Ingrid Quitz opened
Ingrid’s Kitchen to provide Oklahoma City with fine German food and
European and American specialties.
Current
owner Lee Burrus offers customers many of Ingrid’s original recipes for
bakery delicacies, such as bratwurst, sauerbraten, nuessecken, wiener
schnitzel and homemade sauerkraut — as well as the state’s largest
commercial gingerbread house.
