MUST-SEE: Cal Academy of Science’s gingerbread rainforest replica in SF

Who says gingerbread is just for houses?

A trio of biologists and engineers from San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences has preserved the museum’s lush, four-story Osher Rainforest in edible form. The impressive structure — teeming with flora and fauna down to the famous butterflies — is on display through the end of Christmas Day to admission-paying visitors at 55 Music Concourse Drive in San Francisco. You’ll find it inside the building, near the swamp where Claude the Albino alligator lives.

It took Tim Wong, Kelsey Paulling and Ryan Schaeffer a whopping 25 hours to create the floors, elevator shaft and planter boxes out of gingerbread. They used pretzel sticks for the curved pathways. Fondant and royal icing for the plants and endless greenery. The water feature — with swimming fish — was fashioned out of isomalt sugar substitute. And the rocks are actually chocolate candies.

Only the wooden base and dowels to hold up the floors and cardboard to hold the ramp are non-edible.

The trio took a few creative liberties, according to Paulling, who is a pastry chef when she’s not wearing her biologist hat. She says they couldn’t resist “cartoonizing” the rainforest a bit, adding a sloth, for instance, which is not at Osher but commonly found in rainforests.

And, of course, there’s Claude, whose piercing red eyes peek out between some branches. He doesn’t technically reside in the rainforest but is arguably the Academy’s most famous resident, Paulling said.