When I Grow Up I Want To… Build Gingerbread Houses: All About One of the Sweetest Gigs in Town
If your child wants to live in a life-size gingerbread house (think Hansel and Gretel sans the evil witch), then they’ll be drooling over Rabii Saber’s job. Saber is the Executive Pastry Chef at the Four Seasons Resort Orlando at Walt Disney World® Resort, and every day he gets to craft delectable desserts for guests to enjoy.
Since his career started thirty years ago, he’s worked all over the world for leading luxury hospitality brands and was part of Team USA in the 2017 Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie in Lyon, France, competing alongside some of the best pastry chefs in the world.
While he oversees all the pastries at the Four Seasons, over the holidays he takes on one very merry, and not to mention massive, endeavor: Building a to-scale gingerbread house.
We sat down with Saber as he shares with Orlando Parenting Magazine all about his gingerbread cookie creations.
Make sure to be on the lookout for his newest build this December!
Orlando Parenting Magazine: How did you get into building gingerbread houses? Was it always something you loved to do?
Rabii Saber: My love for pastry started long before I began building gingerbread houses. What attracted me to pastry was the combination of creativity, precision, craftsmanship, and attention to detail, all things I genuinely enjoy.
My first experience with gingerbread houses was at The Greenbrier, where we created small houses as part of a larger holiday village scene. Later, while I was at Four Seasons Resort Lanai, we recreated Dole Park as a holiday display, with small gingerbread houses and local businesses that were auctioned for charity.
Over the years, I began working on larger-scale gingerbread displays and really came to appreciate the possibilities they offered. The response from our guests was wonderful, and I saw how something created by the pastry team could become much more than a display, it could become part of a family’s holiday experience and memories. That is what I enjoy most about these projects. They bring together so many things I love: pastry, architecture, chocolate work, design, attention to detail and, especially, teamwork.
OPM: Can you describe the design process for a house of this size?
RS: A display of this scale starts many months before guests ever see it. We first develop the story and overall concept: what we want families to feel when they see it and how the display will fit into the holiday experience at the resort. From there, we think almost like architects. We consider the structure, proportions, colors, materials, and all of the small decorative details. We also have to think practically about how everything will be built, transported, assembled, and maintained throughout the holiday season.
Once the design is established, the pastry team begins producing the gingerbread, chocolate, and decorative pieces. Different members of the team contribute their individual talents, and eventually hundreds of individual elements come together to create one finished display.
One of my favorite moments is seeing guests encounter it for the first time, especially children. They don’t see all the planning and hours behind it. They just see something magical, and that’s exactly what we want.
Related: How to Tour Disney Hotels for Gingerbread and Christmas Decorations: Copy Our 4 Hour Itinerary
OPM: Do you have any tricks to making a regular gingerbread house super cool or easy hacks to simplify the process?
RS: My first advice is: don’t try to make it perfect! Especially when you’re making a gingerbread house with children, the fun and the memories are much more important than perfect walls.
For an easier house, build and assemble the structure first and give it plenty of time to set before decorating. Royal icing works almost like cement and helps hold everything together.
Then let the children take over the decorating. Give them different candies, cookies, marshmallows, cereal and sprinkles, and let them use their imagination. Parents, sit back, watch, and enjoy. You may be surprised by what they create! And if something breaks, don’t worry. In pastry, improvising and finding solutions is part of the craft, and sometimes a little extra icing can fix almost anything!
OPM: What’s your advice for kids who want to be a pastry chef like you?
RS: Stay curious, be patient, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Pastry requires practice, a lot of practice. Like any craft, mastering it takes thousands of hours, but every one of those hours teaches you something. Your first cake, cookie, or gingerbread house may not look exactly the way you imagined, and that’s perfectly fine. The more you repeat something, the more your hands learn along with your mind. Eventually, techniques that once seemed difficult start to feel natural.
I would also encourage children to taste and try everything — different foods, fruits, vegetables, and flavors — and then try to describe what they taste like. Is it sweet, sour, bitter, creamy, crunchy or something they have never experienced before? Developing your palate is just as important as learning how to use your hands.
Learn about different cultures and pay attention to the world around you, too. Inspiration doesn’t only come from cookbooks. It can come from nature, architecture, art, travel, another culture, or even something you notice while walking through your neighborhood.
Most importantly, enjoy making people happy. That’s one of the greatest things about being a pastry chef: you create something with your hands, and then you get to watch someone smile when they experience it.
OPM: If you could build anything out of gingerbread, no matter how big or crazy, what would it be?
RS: I think it would be fun to create an entire gingerbread village that guests could actually walk through, not just one house, but streets, shops, a bakery, and little hidden details everywhere.
I would want children to feel as though they had stepped inside a gingerbread world. And, of course, if there were no limits, I would make sure there was plenty of chocolate involved too!
Related: How to Tour Christmas Decorations at Disney’s BoardWalk Hotels for FREE
Sweet Stats!
Here’s the lowdown on how Saber and his team created this epic gingerbread house:
The house itself measured 10 feet wide, 6 feet long, and 10 feet high, surrounded by a holiday scene measuring approximately 14 feet wide by 12 feet long.
The pastry team dedicated more than 350 hours to bringing the display to life.
The ingredients included…
- 450 pounds of gingerbread
- 400 pounds of sugar, 300 pounds of this was mixed with 150 pounds of egg whites for the royal icing!
- 200 pounds of fondant
- 200 pounds of flour
Related:
- 20 Best Christmas Events and Holiday Season Activities for Kids in Orlando
- 25 Free Kid-Friendly Christmas Events and Holiday Celebrations in Orlando
- 10 Affordable Christmas Events in Orlando and Other Ways to Celebrate the Holidays with Family
- 15 Orlando’s Best Christmas Lights and Holiday Decorations
All images courtesy of Four Seasons Resort Orlando at Walt Disney World® Resort. Originally published in the November/December 2026 issue of Orlando Parenting Magazine.
