My family have always been keen home bakers and cooks, so as I grew up, everyone around me would be making things in the kitchen. I joined in from as early as I can remember. There are photos of me when I was very small, making an apple pie. I'm standing on a chair trying to get to the pastry.
I had to leave my job for health reasons the same year and while I was recovering I had a few months where I didn't have to work, so I decided to start selling gingerbread creations. I found a kitchen in a church in East London where the rent was low, and started out selling biscuits and smaller gingerbread pieces. It took years to build my business up, but through luck and perseverance my gingerbread creations became bigger and bigger over time.
I have to make templates for each cookie component of a large building and I sometimes make a 3D model from cardboard, dismantle it and use it as a template to cut the gingerbread from. It's sometimes tricky to work out the angles on domes, for example, so as someone who doesn't have any architectural or design training, it's easier for me to make it by hand from cardboard.
I used Google Earth and photos to make an entire cardboard model of the palace and its gardens before I started baking. It was extremely detailed because vanilla biscuit doesn't last as long as gingerbread, so I had to do all the baking two days prior to the party. I knew I didn't have much room for trial and error. I also made the Palace's ornamental gardens using green tea biscuit, so they had a completely natural green color. That was really fun.
There's a long list of buildings I'd still love to recreate in gingerbread. In the U.K. I'd love to make the British Museum and Blenheim Palace, which is England's only non-royal palace. The Chrysler building in New York is certainly on my list and I'd love to make the Metropolitan Museum of Art; arches and little statues are always enjoyable to craft. I also think the pastel, art deco buildings of Miami would be extremely fun to recreate.