Edible housing

GREG JOHNSON/Frontiersman

BY GREG JOHNSON

Frontiersman

WASILLA — Saturday was a sweet homecoming for Laurie Ethridge, whose attention to holiday detail made her gingerbread house a first-place winner.

“I’m so excited,” Ethridge said after her traditional Christmas-themed creation won a blue ribbon at the annual Wasilla Holiday Community Celebration. “I worked really hard, and I have a 4-year-old at home, so it was really hard keeping him out of it.”

Just her third gingerbread house, Ethridge went through dozens of candy canes and many batches of the dense, pungent cake to get her house just right, she said. Working before and after work for a week, she put in about 35 hours working on the house.

That time and effort showed in the final result, said Dave Nyberg, owner of All I Saw Cookware and a judge of the contest.

In addition to decorating the outside of the house with icing and candy, Ethridge created miniature holiday scenes inside as well, Nyberg said.

“She finished the inside, which we thought was great,” he said. “It was fantastic, and I’m sure she put quite a bit of time into it.”

Winning a blue ribbon and a gift certificate from All I Saw Cookware, which sponsored the contest, is a far cry from Ethridge’s first attempt at making a gingerbread house.

“My very first one I tried, I did the roof tiles and had it just right with all the heavy hard candy, but then the tiles wouldn’t stick,” she said. “So, I ended up beating it to pieces with my rolling pin. We just ate that one. It was good to eat.”

For this year’s winning creation, Ethridge used lots of candy canes and peppermints and royal icing. Tootsie Rolls to make table legs, pretzels and Jolly Rancher candies as presents under the tiny Christmas tree. Outside the house, the happy snowman was actually dried out dinner rolls covered in icing.

“One of my favorite things to do is watch the gingerbread house competition on the Food Network,” she said. “I get a lot of ideas from there.”

She also was impressed with the creativity of the other gingerbread creations — which will remain on display at the Dorothy G. Page Museum through Saturday.

“There were some really clever, really cool things, like a pirate ship and the Alaska Railroad,” she said. “It’s just so fun, because you can do anything if you have the time and the creativity.”

One of the more creative entries that caught Nyberg’s eye was from some Cub Scouts.

“Some of the kids had some nice ones,” he said. “There was a Cub Scout pack that made a nice-looking presentation with little pup tents outside. Another was a castle, and I noticed it looked like inside the Knights of the Roundtable were in there.”

For museum curator Bethany Buckingham, the gingerbread house competition was one of many events that brought a lively crowd to downtown Wasilla on Saturday, capped by a lighting of the community Christmas tree.

“We had a great turnout,” she said. “There were people on the hay rides every 10 minutes and a great group that hung out for the lighting ceremony. We also had the Air Force Band, which was just an amazing group, and a community chorus.”

The gingerbread house contest has been a favorite for the past 10 years of the holiday celebration, Buckingham said.

“Everyone looks forward to it every year, so there’s a lot of anticipation and we have a lot of return (entrants). They are getting to be so well done, and these are things people do in their spare time. They’re not professionals.”

From hayrides to children having their pictures taken with Santa to Mrs. Claus holding story time, “We had people going every which way,” Buckingham said. “It was an amazing turnout, especially with the economy being what it is. It’s great to have something like this to jump-start the holiday season.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.

GINGERBREAD WINNERS

Prizes for the annual Gingerbread House Contest at Saturday’s Wasilla Holiday Community Celebration:

Children 4-10: 1. Jackson Barker; 2. Kaylynn Zagyva; 3. (tie) Emily Mead and Heather Swartz.

Children 11-15: 1. Evan Jakab; 2. Jenny Hawkins.

Adult: 1. Laurie Ethridge; 2. Ginny Hale; 3. Trayton Moorman.