Anna Polyviou Presents Wicked Christmas Party With Gospel Singers, Bearded Bakers and Tribal Drummers at Wonderland Gingerbread House

Anna Polyviou and her pastry team will add a cool new twist to Christmas when they unveil a life-size gingerbread house and edible lolly garden to the tune of gospel singers and tribal drummers at a VIP launch party at Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney on 1 December.

Anna's team is busy building the Christmas wonderland that Hansel and Gretel would kill to take a bite out of using 1500 kilograms of gingerbread bricks and oodles of icing and lollies. It will be open to the public from 2 December with take-home goodies to buy.

“Come through our lobby in December and you will take a mad trip through the gingerbread house and try all the lollies,” Anna said.

With DJ Broox spinning funky tunes, gospel singers bringing down the house and drummer Lloyd G lifting the roof, this will not be your average Christmas party. The guest list includes celebrity chefs, Anna's industry friends and TV and radio personalities.

There will be a special appearance by the Bearded Bakers, who will pass around a Christmas version of Knafeh, the dessert made famous at the pop-up street-art-covered bakery which they move around Sydney and even to New York.

Anna will be on hand to sign copies of the new Great Australian Cook Bookfeaturing 100 of Australia's top chefs and their recipes, with proceeds donated to OzHarvest.

Anna said she wanted to create an Anna party that no other hotel would do. “Christmas doesn't have to be all about singing old carols – why shouldn't it be a really fun, exciting event with lots of colour, music and food, all those awesome things,” she said.

GINGERBREAD HOUSE OPENING HOURS

The gingerbread house will be open to the public daily from 7am on Wednesday, 2 December. Mini Gingerbread Lolly Bag Houses, Ginger Ninjas, Fruit Mince Tubes, Connect Four Macaron Packs, White Christmas Nougat and Christmas Pudding will be for sale in take-home packs.

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Video: Anna Polyviou's Gingerbread Christmas at Shangri-La

ANNA POLYVIOU

You could pick Anna Polyviou out of a line-up from afar with her piercings, bleached blonde Mohawk, colourful G-shock watches and rad high-top sneakers. But it's her wicked fun drive and love for breaking the rules for crazy street art and her personal DJ that has her standing out from the rest.

Her face was beamed around the nation when she was a guest judge on MasterChef Australia, asking fearful contestants to recreate her complicated modernist take on the classic carrot cake.

The award winning pastry chef walked into Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney three years ago, transformed the pastry team and is now a driving force behind patisserie revolution in hotels around Australia.

Anna added a touch of cool to the five-star hotel scene with her sell-out Dessert Degustations and the nation's first-ever dessert festival, Sweet Street, with Adriano Zumbo, Gelato Messina, LuxBite, N2 Gelato, Kirsten Tibballs, to the tunes of DJ music with graffiti artists and break dancers.

Anna did her apprenticeship in Melbourne, where she won Best Apprentice in Victoria in a competition run by Les Toques Blanc. This took her to Claridge's Hotel London. While working and studying there, she won the Award for Excellence, Best Dessert in the UK, which gained her a place at Pierre Herme's famous Paris patisserie.

This year Anna was ambassador of Smooth FM's huge Chocolate Festival in The Rocks, launched the first-ever Kit Kat studio and created her own Kit Kat bar. She helped launch the Audi TT and one of her cakes was plastered across billboards and buses for The Great Australian Bake-Off.