The gingerbread man

Palmerston North man Aaron Hickmott started baking as a child selling treats on the side of the road. Now he’s shipping gingerbread around the country.

Hickmott, 26, last year opened a bakery in Takaro, Master of Gingerbread, focused on gingerbread, but also makes biscuits and cakes, all made by hand.

One of his most popular items are gingerbread house kits, which have all the pieces and people put the house together, and he makes thousands of them a year.

‘‘I’ve been sending them all around the country. I’ve been sending them to Auckland and I did a couple of hundred kits a week before Christmas [last year].’’

It takes him about two hours to prepare 100 gingerbread house kits.

Hickmott has been baking since he was 9 running bake sales outside his house. He started using his mum’s leftover pikelet mix, giving the money to his mother, and things grew.

He left school at 14 and did a baking apprenticeship at Winter Family Bakery. He said he struggled with dyslexia and had always been a hands-on person, so baking suited him. He later worked at Melody’s New World, before starting his own business, which was the idea of his late grandfather. ‘‘His last dying wish was ‘I need to see you do this.’ That’s what made me do this. Four weeks later, I did it from home for a year.’’

He didn’t know why he chose gingerbread to be his speciality, but once he started making the house kits, the popularity took off and he wanted it to be a point of difference. ‘‘It wasn’t until I started the houses eight years ago that people started getting on board ... I was making more and then every year it was getting bigger. Then you’re making that gingerbread every day and everyone was calling me gingerbread man, so we took [the name] Master of Gingerbread.’’

The recipe he uses is a traditional style of gingerbread and quality is a big driver for him. He can make 480 gingerbread biscuits in one batch and 22 small houses in a batch.

He does gluten-free baking as well.