Baba Yaga's Winter Home

This is a whimsical interpretation of Baba Yaga's hut from Russian folklore. Baba Yaga (usually translated as grandmother-witch) is a supernatural old woman who lives in a house standing on chicken feet.

The walls of the gingerbread house are made of an orange-cinnamon gingerbread, and the roof is cardamom sugar cookie topped with slivered almonds, with a praline cookie chimney. Windows are yellow sugar glass. The chicken legs are made of modeling chocolate and the feet rest on a milk chocolate base. Everything is held together with vanilla-rum royal icing.

I designed this house by creating a cardboard mock up, and then carefully making a precise cardboard cut out for each piece (24 pieces in all) and labeling them as different house modules, before cutting them out of cookie dough. The chicken legs are held up via a clothes hanger twisted into a base!