Five hours and fifteen minutes. That's how long it took my family and I to create a gingerbread model of the pagoda at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and candy model of the famed two and a half mile oval.
Why would we do such a thing?
My answer: Why not?
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| The Initial Set Up |
It started as a fun idea and transformed into reality tonight. It all started about a month ago when I started to think about gingerbread houses. I had done one when I was a young child and it was a disaster. Many years later, I decided to take a second crack at the Christmas-themed creation but I went above and beyond the average gingerbread house that comes from a kit. I wanted to do Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
How was this going to work? I thought of the track. The actually gingerbread structure would be the pagoda but what about the grandstands? Race track? Walls? Spectators? It was not an easy task but I really thought about it.
My mother and I came up with ways to make this work. Graham crackers for stands, M&Ms and gummy bears as spectators, chocolate Twizzlers as the asphalt, mini marshmallows as the walls with Pull n' Peel Twizzlers on toothpicks as the catch fence. It was all coming together in my head but how would it come together on the dinning room table?
As you can see above I started by wrapping thick poster board with tinfoil. With that as a base I folded index cards to rest graham crackers on the angle to mimic grandstands.
Phase one was simple. I laid the marshmallows around an outline of the track. After those were laid down, within the "walls" chocolate Twizzlers were placed. Now a few things you will notice: No apron and no road course. Let me say this was hard enough just doing the oval. It's not an exact model of Indianapolis Motor Speedway but it's damn close.
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| After Laying Down The Walls, Asphalt and Grandstands |
I was able to get phase one out of the way by myself but the rest involved the help of my family, more specifically my mother, grandmother, Uncle Bill and cousin William. Ten hands got to work dipping each M&M in icing and placing them nicely on the graham cracker grandstand forming a colorful crowd.
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| Turn One As Catch Fence is Constructed |
As the grandstand were being filled the catch fence was being constructed. My cousin William peeled apart the Twizzlers and carefully stuck a toothpick threw three strands of the gelatin material and then place a toothpick inside every third mini marshmallow.
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| View of Turn Two With Catch Fence |
Of course any model of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would not be complete without the addition of the famed scoring pylon which was is represented by five towering caramels.
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| Early Stages of the Front Straightaway |
As my family continued working on the track, I got started on the pagoda which was harder than first anticipated. Using one of the gingerbread kits I took what would normally be used for the sides of a gingerbread house and stood them up longways with what would normally be the roof standing as the sides of the pagoda that runs parallel to the front straightaway. After that was constructed, the hard part became constructing the tiers of the pagoda. Icing wasn't enough to hold the pieces of graham crackers in place and caramels were placed underneath to keep them from falling. A few Hershey's Kisses were placed on top to represent the flags on top. The pagoda doesn't feature the exact amount of tiered roofs but given the size it was the best we could do.
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| The Pagoda |
We continued to work on the aesthetics of the Speedway. I will admit The Hall of Fame Museum could be better. It's a Chocolate Fudge Pop Tart standing on top of four stacks of three mini marshmallows. Once again, not the greatest representation for the museum. Some gummy bears were place in turn three to represent the snake pit. Not a difficult snake pit to construct but it works.
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| From Turns One and Two Looking Toward Museum |
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| Turn Three with the Snake Pit |
Then there was the golf course. We needed something was green. I'm still not sure what it is but my uncle used the fondant from the gingerbread house kit to contracted the four holes of Brickyard Crossing located inside the Speedway. With the help of some food coloring, he dyed a piece of paper blue to represent the pond located along side the eighth hole of the golf course.
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| Turn Two With Golf Course |
As the clock has struck midnight, Christmas Eve is here. This project was done not just to honor the Indianapolis Motor Speedway but to take advantage of the precious time a family has together. It isn't everyday a family can get together to complete as detailed a project as this. Christmas and the holiday season that comes every December is the rare occasion when a family could work on something that will be picked at over the next three or four days but the memories of the night and hard work will last much longer than that.
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| Front Straightaway |
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| Turn One |
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| Back Straightaway |
As for next year, maybe we tackle something a little more challenging. Circuit de la Sarthe? Nordschleife? Or perhaps we skip next year. After all I have seen enough candy tonight that I never want to see it ever again.
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| Turn Three |
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| Turn Four |
It's not perfect. The suites are missing from turn two, there is no road course, no pit lane grandstands or victory lane but we gave it our all. There will be some final decorations added but I hope you all enjoyed the model of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and I wish you all a Merry Christmas.
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| Merry Christmas From For The Love of Indy |
