| OCR Text |
Show Gingerbread Houses: A fun family tradition 'Following the family fa-mily rule that none of the house can be eaten until Christmas Christ-mas is the most diffi-cult diffi-cult part.. . . 41 ' "" V A - l 5 , f 4 , v-y - , a A r A ' J - V I - r AA - V Xfi A I " 'f - " " v A ' ' s )l lh ,IUI)Y JKNSKN NORTH SALT LAKE--What docs a lady who bakes over 1500 cookies each week do in her spare time? She bakes houses. Gingerbread Gin-gerbread Houses. Linda Naylor, owner of Linda's Cookies, bakes cookies for a living. Each week she supplies convenience conven-ience stores with giant size cookies in four different flavors. All of this jiokic baking has not dampened ula's enthusiasm to carry on the j -year-old family tradition of making mak-ing Gingerbread Houses. What began as a group of neighbors neigh-bors who had young families getting get-ting together to make one house per family, has mushroomed to include each of the eight Naylor children making their own version of a Gingerbread Gin-gerbread House, plus several others. "We started out with just the one house, but as we added more children chil-dren we added more houses, "said Linda. She explained that one year they made 67 houses for the family, their relatives and others. "One year the kids heard of a family that would not have a good Christmas. We had already done our houses and they came home and suggested that we take our Christmas Christ-mas tree and our Gingerbread Houses to this family. My husband Bill and I were very touched by the kids wanting to help the fa-mily,"said fa-mily,"said Linda. They purchased a new tree for the family and took their Gingerbread Gin-gerbread Houses and some gifts and left them on the doorstep of the other home late one evening. "The kids remember that as the best Christmas they ever had," she said. From that time on the tradition of making the Gingerbread Houses has been even more enjoyable. Troy 19, Trisha 16, Michael 12, Timothy 10, and Jonathan 7, joined their mom for this year's construction project. "They ate nearly all of the candy while they were waiting for the ic-ing,"laughcd ic-ing,"laughcd Linda and added that she had purchased $65.00 worth of candy for this year's 10 houses. The actual construction begins the day before the decorating. Linda bakes the walls and the gables and they are then allowed to cool and of this year's version of U I ichael, Jonathan and Ti- v. : -Wl r jst one house a year has jfr 4 J I l i , l l i&'i? - '"' v and filling the inside of his house with candy. He reasoned that the - fart that ihp rnnHv i;qc nnt attorhfvl After lots of time, fun and nibbling, the Naylors display a few of this year's version of their Gingerbread Houses. Linda, mother of Trisha, Troy, Michael, Jonathan and Timothy, Ti-mothy, began the tradition 19 years ago and what began as just one house a year has mushroomed to as many as 67 in one season. harden overnight. Doors and windows are cut before the cookie is baked. The "mortar" consists of a special icing including egg whites, powdered sugar and cream of tartar. The trickiest part of the entire construction process is getting the roof to hold up under the weight of the icing. Linda solved the problem by making the roof out of cardboard. card-board. "It is now the only inedible part of the house, but they no longer collapse," she said. Following the family rule that none of the house can be eaten until Christmas is the most difficult part for the children. Jonathan solved the problem by not adding a roof Linda always helps with the roof of each house. She learned lear-ned early that Gingerbread would not support the icing and candy after several roofs collapsed. The roof is now made of cardboard for stronger construction. - 4l ! ' y -X ! - aV J A j mfr x 1 f X- ' ; I - Li !! - - - -- !- and filling the inside of his house with candy. He reasoned that the fact that the candy was not attached to the house would make that stash of sweets exempt from the rule. "Although we have that rule I'll bet I could go to anyone's room and find a few nibbles out of the gingerbread," gin-gerbread," said Linda. Through the years the family has had some memorable experiences during the hours of decorating. Trisha Tri-sha remembered with barely concealed con-cealed delight, " the year we had a frosting fight with our cousins. It was really fun," she said with a grin. The styles of houses the Naylors have tried have ranged from entire villages to castles. "Mark added lights one year just to make his house a little bit different," said Linda. Although they have built a variety, the traditional house has remained the family's favorite, 'The styles of the houses the Naylors have tried have ranged from entire villages to castles.' Building the Gingerbread Houses has not produced any architects in the family yet, but this summer Bill undertook the task of building a new family home. All of the children chil-dren have had a hand in the construction, con-struction, and the hard work of building an actual home made them look forward even more to constructing con-structing cookie houses. Linda expects the 19-year-old tradition to continue for many years to come. She is already looking forward to teaching her three grandchildren, who are the beginning begin-ning of the next generation of Naylors, Nay-lors, the finer points of creating houses out of dough. trmr juwri 11 11 1 I I iinwim iW i i iiihi 1 nmw I A ' ' ' ! ' I A ! i v I ill x "-Cv I i ' " N i sX sl--' V A A "A I i f : I Jonathan takes' time out for "clean up" before he i proceeds with the construction of his masterpiece. Nibbling Nib-bling the finished product is one of his favorite pastimes. ! - 1 I "Tons" of candy and icing are needed to complete the production of the houses. Each family member has his own favorite candy. This year, $65.00 worth of goodies were used to decorate the 1 0 houses. |
