The 2025 Great South Mountain Gingerquake Holiday Competition

Teams competed in the design and construction of gingerbread structures, using a standard kit and an imaginary $20 budget to “purchase” additional materials to create imaginative structures. The structure lasting longest on the civil engineering shake table wins!

Material selection included specialized icing ($5 per cup), pretzel sticks ($4 each), candy canes ($3 each), additional graham crackers ($2 each), sugar cones ($2 each), and marshmallows ($1 each). Players could not exceed the $20 budget, which would result in disqualification. Structures could be decorated, but decorations could not serve as structural supports unless they were purchased with the budget.

The catch? Competitors were encouraged to base their structures on recognizable pop-culture trends to help enhance social media reach—think Sabrina Carpenter's iconic stage presentation, and gingerbread houses that draw from the movie Wicked and the television series Stranger Things.

And the winner is... Emerald City, built by Anya Gelin, Joelle Dizon, and Katrina Bui. The team strategically stuffed their structure with marshmallows, pretzel sticks, and more to cinch the win!