Holiday-ish: Day 14

Among the Christmas paraphernalia we unpack each year is a gingerbread house mold. Circa 1995, the Cozy Cottage kit was sold by Longaberger, a company whose headquarters looked like a picnic basket because baskets were their real bread and butter.

My mother passed it down to us, never used, thinking it would be a fun family project when my boys were little. Spoiler alert – every year they weren’t interested.

But a 2020 upside is there’s now a girl in our house, a lockdown covid-habitator and recent art school graduate who is up for the challenge. The whole family agrees to participate. Finally.

Here’s how that went:

We discover that somewhere in the past 25 years the Cozy Cottage instructions went missing. Some of the parts are obvious, like the front door and the roof, but there is little chance of successful assemblage without those instructions. A google search turns up empty. After 30 hours of research we abandon the mold.

Our google search does turn up Cupcake Jemma. She’s going to teach us to make mini edible houses. Bonus – she’s British. Enchanted by her accent and armed with thousands of episodes of British baking shows, we’ve got this. First step – spending many hours googling Cupcake Jemma’s backstory.

Second step is gathering the ingredients. We have everything but molasses. Did you look in the pantry? Is this it? No, that’s hoisin sauce. How old is that? Someone has to mask up and go get molasses. (Someone does.) Now we’re set. Wait. The ginger container is empty. You can’t make gingerbread without ginger. Someone has to mask up and go get ginger. (A different someone does.)

Now we’re ready. We print out the instructions and promptly find urgent tasks requiring our immediate attention, leaving the job of preparing the dough, tracing the pattern and baking the gingerbread to the art school graduate. While the parts are cooling, she makes seven different colors of royal icing. Exhausted by our urgent tasks we save assembling and decorating for tomorrow.

The next day we are greeted with a table filled by the art school graduate with sprinkles and piping tips and ice cream cones for little Christmas trees. She’s even prepared a large silver tray covered in white icing and coconut flakes meant to look like snow.

We’re ready to help but first we need to complete more urgent tasks. Unfortunately for my son/her boyfriend, he’s required by law to be supportive. He joins her/watches as she assembles and decorates. The rest of us occasionally pass by, making encouraging comments and promises to be right back, until eventually the village is complete. It’s adorable. Success!

And that’s how the whole family gathered together to finally make gingerbread houses. Come to think of it, maybe my boys weren’t the only ones not interested all these years.