That’s the way the cookie crumbles

by Sally Jack

What takes 500 gumballs, 200 candy canes, 1,100 lbs. of flour, 140 gallons of molasses, 300 pounds of royal icing, 180 pounds of Rice Krispies, and makes people smile?
Answer: The biggest gingerbread house in Utah, now on display at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City.
This almost life-sized gingerbread house took an astounding 700 hours of labor (and love) to create. It’s awe inspiring to stand next to it!
And yet, it started me to thinking . . .
My daughter and I have participated in Monticello’s annual gingerbread house tour every year since its beginning in 2016.
The base of the snow globe gingerbread creation I made one year took seven batches of Rice Krispie treats alone.
It’s quite possible that together with our combined efforts over the past 10 years, we have probably made 300 pounds of royal icing and spent 700 hours making our 20 gingerbread houses too!
Our houses take anywhere from three days (mine) to 3 weeks (hers). Between us, we have no idea how many batches of gingerbread and royal frosting we have made in that ten years; I’ve burned too many batches of gingerbread to count!
Both of us have broken so many cookie pieces we could have built 10 more houses with them; instead, it means that just when we thought we were finished, we’ve got to pull out the mixing bowls and molasses and start all over again—even if it’s the fiftieth batch we’ve had to mix up that year.
By the time we fall into bed long after midnight, neither of us can sleep, for the visions of ruined gingerbread dancing in our heads.
After a particularly trying year in which the usual cookie & frosting mishaps were topped by burning my arm on piping hot gingerbread (as in major blisters) I suddenly saw the witch from Hansel and Gretel in a whole new light.
By the time she bought out aisle number five at the candy store, got through mixing, rolling, cutting, and baking life-sized piece of gingerbread in that mammoth oven of hers, and succeeded in getting the whole thing to stick together with 67 gallons of frosting, no wonder she felt like eating the children who had the nerve to eat her out of house and home—and without even asking!
I kinda know how she feels. Gingerbread houses have an uncanny way of falling apart, dropping candy, swallowing up tiny pieces, and refusing to fit together nicely.
Sometimes the pieces break. Sometimes the frosting is too thick or too thin. Sometimes the frosting bag splits open and icing goobers out everywhere except where it’s supposed to be.
Sometimes we run out of candy and have to run to the store for more. It takes a lot of patience to sit there and hold house walls together while the frosting dries, and sometimes even then things fall apart or break. But what can you expect from a bunch of cookies and frosting?
After three days of this I am all thumbs. I have frosting in my hair. There are crumbs throughout the house, and enough sprinkles scattered on the kitchen floor to skate across it for a week without stopping; the pile of dirty dishes rivals the size of the Grinch’s pilfered loot leaning precariously on the top of Mt. Crumpit.
I have spent my entire Christmas budget on candy, the house smells like burned gingerbread, and there’s nothing for dinner.
It is then that a true Christmas miracle takes place: the gingerbread house is finally finished. It even turned out pretty cute.
And when we take the tour and find ourselves all smiles looking at the wonderful creations the other gingerbread artists in Monticello have made, we realize it was worth it, after all. Because gingerbread houses at Christmas time make people smile.