MANSFIELD, Ohio — The 11th annual culinary arts gingerbread house competition ended in a tie this week at Mansfield Senior High School.
Two lavishly decorated houses, each surrounded by colorful landscape, earned an identical number of first-place votes cast by Senior High faculty and staff. Eleven houses were on display in the Cub Room during the voting period.
Juniors Chloe Jackson and Tayna Scruggs built their design around a polar bear situated on simulated blue water.
“Because he’s cute,” Scruggs said.
They started making dough a week and a half before the judging. Early last week they built the walls of the house, then added the roof the next day. Decorating the house and the landscape followed.
Dakoda Addington and Ta’Neesha Franklin, also juniors, completed their winning entry in just a few days after an abrupt change of plans.
“We had planned a tribute to the twin towers in New York but some thought that might be offensive, so we changed to an elf house setting,” Franklin said.
“We had to restart in a hurry,” said Addington, who attributes his love of baking to his grandmother.
“She got me started when I was as young as 3,” he said. “I always helped her bake for Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
All four agreed the work was fun, although sometimes stressful.
Because of the tie, there was no second-place award. Third place went to the entry of seniors Jalana Gieseman, Stephanie Wallace and Me’Nawsha Parks.
Each year, chef Linda Golden, the culinary arts instructor, explains the process of constructing the gingerbread houses is much more difficult than most people understand.
Students design their themes and make their own patterns. They bake the gingerbread carefully to assure a consistency that will prevent falling walls or collapsed roofs. Decorations include pounds of candy, pretzels, sugars, coconut and paints.
Each new group of gingerbread house builders learns Golden’s secret: The “glue” that holds the houses together is a royal icing of egg whites, powdered sugar and lemon juice.
