“Don’t play with your food” is the biggest lie we’ve ever been told.
I’ve been playing with food for over 15+ years now, taking delicious ingredients and seeing how to construct them into something more than the sum of their parts.
Though I’m probably best known for my gingerbread architecture, which was my full time job for nearly a decade (where was that on school careers forms?!) I’ve also created everything from spaghetti trees to Victorian brownie tiles to fortune cookies to spice mandalas.
Whatever the ingredients, I specialise in bringing brands to life via the medium of food, glorious food.
Style and substance
My work is centred around connecting with awe and wonder, and as such all of my work tastes as good as it looks. After all, what’s the point of a gingerbread clock you can’t snap the hand off to eat?!
As an internationally-renowned food artist, I’ve had the pleasure of working with:
I live, breathe (and build) food
Though I often work on location, my home ‘office’ is the bakery I co-founded in Hertfordshire (where the walls are made from actual bricks and mortar, rather than biscuit and icing). I’m also the proud co-owner of Offbeat Vending, a vending machine that exclusively dispenses the work of incredibly talented artists.
Wired magazine’s ‘Obsessed’ series: How This Woman Makes Epic Gingerbread Houses
Featured in…
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“Emily Garland has tiled the roof of the Palace of Versailles, constructed the iconic dome on top of Yorkshire’s Castle Howard, and secured the windows in London’s Somerset House.
No, she’s not a construction worker with an eclectic CV. Not in the traditional sense, at least.
The 38-year-old is a full-time ‘gingerbread architect’, who specialises in making biscuit versions of the world’s most famous buildings. As far as she’s aware, she’s the only baker of her kind.”
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“I can identify the building that houses Maid of Gingerbread’s studio/bakery by the sweet and spicy festive smell wafting out into the backstreets of east London. Inside, an assistant is piping dainty icing flourishes onto a host of gingerbread house fronts lined up on a tabletop.”
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“Her sweet creations are a wonder to behold. Forget gingerbread men, as an architectural gingerbread maker Emily has “built” the likes of the Palace of Versailles, Yorkshire’s Castle Howard and London’s Somerset House. Despite her attention to detail and the creations’ sound structure, Emily is not a professionally trained architect or model maker.”
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“Emily Garland is a food artist based in South East England. With over a decade of experience in the world of food art, Emily has become renowned for creating intricately detailed masterpieces out of edible materials. She originally founded a gingerbread company that gained recognition for crafting iconic landmarks entirely out of biscuit, including recreations of the Palace of Versailles, the Waldorf Hilton, and Somerset House. Today, Emily works across all types of food but remains best known for her stunning, architecturally accurate gingerbread creations.”
