(CNN) Travis Casagrande's gingerbread house is outfitted with a wreath, a snow-capped roof and, of course, a Christmas tree.

But you probably couldn't see all that without a microscope.

That's because Casagrande, a research associate at McMaster University in Ontario, built a gingerbread house he said is just one-tenth of a hair long -- and 20,000 times smaller than the average store-bought cookie home.

It's a festive, if minuscule, display of ingenuity. Casagrande told CNN he hopes it sparks "scientific curiosity" in people who'd never thought about electron microscopy before.

So how does one build what the university is touting as the world's tiniest gingerbread house?

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