Danielle McGough has used her creative eye to develop a successful career in designing houses. But the houses she designs and builds are made from gingerbread. For the past five years McGough has created show-stopping gingerbread house designs for national store chains.

The Cle Gaurdian design structure option at The Jolly Gingerbread Makery Pop-Up Workshop."I used to be a gingerbread house designer for a company here in Cleveland," she explains. "I designed houses and other structures for Target, World Market, and Walmart."

McGough says she was able to take her designs to new levels while working for the national stores. “I designed a Holiday House for Target that featured windows that you had to crush up candies and melt to create the glass glow effect,” she recalls. “It was the first-ever on the market to be mass manufactured.”

“Additionally, I made an Eiffel Tower for World Market and that was novel as well,” she adds.

From big box to entrepreneur
Despite the success of her gingerbread house designs, McGough decided earlier this year that it was time to leave the retail design world and try something new. By the end of the summer, the Tremont resident launched the Jolly Gingerbread Makery Pop-Up Workshop out of 78^th Street Studios in the Detroit Shoreway.

“I have long had the idea,” she says of her pop-up workshop, “but just this September, I made a quick decision to execute!”

McGough says she has dreamed of opening a workshop where she could make the house bases by hand—allowing for custom cut-out windows and other features that are not possible in mass production. She makes every gingerbread house base herself for her workshops, “because I know the recipe and I would do the testing at the company I used to work for,” she says.

Guests choose their decorations at The Jolly Gingerbread Makery Pop-Up Workshop.“I thought it'd be really fun if we did these immersive workshops where you had lots of options of candy and the cookies,” she adds.

McGough’s workshops offer four different houses, including, the “Classic House,” the “CLE Guardian,” the “Alpine Retreat,” and the “Winter Castle.”

McGough’s workshops employ what she calls "gingineering" to properly assemble the houses. While the Jolly Gingerbread houses are already assembled for the guests, she explains that part of her job was to make sure retail customers could assemble the kits themselves when they got home.

"I used to joke that it is gingineering because you kind of have to know how to engineer these things to work so people can figure them out,” she explains. “On the packaging for the products, I used to do this on the boxes—I would make diagrams of how to assemble it."

Each hand-baked gingerbread cookie set in the workshops comes with royal icing for decorating and building and more than 30 types of sprinkles, candy and savory snacks at the “sprinkle bar” for decorating with the tools needed to apply the decor.

The optional "Snowballin' Add-Ons” include use of the "Sprinkle Blaster," access to 2-D icing decorations, edible windows, and LED lights.

While at the workshops, guests are treated to hot cocoa and gingerbread cookies.

Costs for the three-hour workshops start at $35 for a basic package, the “Classic Cheer,” $40 for the “Extra Nice” package with all the Snowballin’ Add-Ons, and $45 for the “Jolly’s Jam” package, which has a choice of one of the high-end gingerbread house designs and all the Snowballin’ Add-Ons.

Serious business
McGough says she is surprised by how seriously some visitors approach their creations.

Guests work on their decorations at The Jolly Gingerbread Makery Pop-Up Workshop.“The kids really go crazy with the candy and make some elaborate things,” she observes. “But the adults get really meticulous. And the [example houses] I put out, the ones that I make, I try to do simple decorations—not too challenging or intimidating."

McGough provides tools like tweezers for detailed work on the projects. She says participants often exceed expectations with their attention to detail.

"People go much more detailed and will take their time,” she says. “I have lots of tweezers, so you can tweeze and put on little sprinkles. And you have three hours in here, so you can get as meticulous as you want.”

While it may seem like painstaking work to decorate these houses—especially with the level of detail some participants employ—McGough says most of the feedback she receives is about how relaxing the experience is.

“It's a creative, Christmassy kind of relaxing—it’s a fun way to actually do something when you're out and about and socializing,” she says. “It's just a fun vibe, but relaxed."

McGough says this season has been a positive entrepreneurial learning experience. “I learned how to start a business,” she says, “my goal is to make it something that I can do every year."

When it comes to the age-old question of whether to eat the finished gingerbread house, McGough offers a practical solution. "I do give samples of the gingerbread so that you're not tempted to eat your house," she says. "But most people keep them as decorations because the icing gets hard. And most people leave them as decoration because they just smell good when they're in your house."

The next workshop is tonight, Tuesday, Dec. 16 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Additional workshops will be held this weekend, starting Friday, Dec. 19 and running through Sunday, Dec. 21, with the final two workshops on Tuesday, Dec. 23 and on Christmas Eve, Wednesday, Dec. 24.

The workshops are held at 78^th Street Studios, 1300 W. 78^th St., Cleveland, 44102. Parking is free. Tickets are available through the Jolly Gingerbread Makery Workshop's Eventbrite page.