By now you’ve probably caught wind of the 14-foot Gingerbread Macaron Nutcracker “checking into” The Ritz Carlton, Boston Common. Yes, he’s standing there in all of his gingerbread glory, covered in over 2,000 macarons, flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, ginger, clove and almond. Too good to be true? We thought so too.

And that’s why we decided to ask Executive Chef Andrew Yeo and his pastry team – why? I mean, I won’t argue that nothing beats a giant edible holiday decoration – but why would a chef and a pastry team go to such extremes?

According to Chef Yeo, the giant gingerbread nutcracker took only one week to build from start to finish. “We had the entire pastry team working on it,” Yeo told us, “When all is said and done, we will have used close to 3,000 macarons to build, and fix the Nutcracker while it’s on display through the holidays.” That’s a lot of macarons.

The chef also shared with BostInno that his inspiration for building the nutcracker was a gift he received from Laduree Paris, which he describes as having “some of the best macarons in the world.” Chef Yeo also told us that he wanted to tie in the number “14” to celebrate the new year, 2014, so (of course), he made the gingerbread nutcracker 14 feet tall.

In addition to macarons, The Nutcracker was also created with 20 pounds of almond flour, 100 pounds of powdered sugar, 20 pounds of granulated sugar, 5 pounds of water and 4,106 egg whites. I’m not much a baker but I’d venture to say that wasn’t too easy.

Last year the same team built a life-size gingerbread house that “housed” a gift shop so (obviously) the only way to top that this year was to create a larger than life size edible nutcracker. To see it for yourself head to The Ritz Carlton, Boston Common at 10 Avery Street.