Builder masters gingerbread

By SCOTT MCPHERSON

Building a gingerbread house is a common Christmas time activity. But for Oak Harbor amateur confectioner Anna Watson, “common” was not an option.

For her gingerbread house, Watson, 18, decided to construct a scale replica of her family’s old home in Spokane using its original blueprints. Beginning on Monday, Dec. 13, this undertaking ended up taking an entire week.

The baking stage itself took two days, resulting in six batches of dough and 28 separate pieces of gingerbread. The walls didn’t finally go up until Thursday night. The finishing details, such as the garland on the front porch, were not added until Sunday morning.

Gingerbread was not the only sweet ingredient making up Watson’s house. She also used fruit roll-ups for windows, Golden Grahams cereal for shingles, candy canes for porch columns, cake icing for snow and icicles, and sprinkles for Christmas lights, each individually placed with surgical tweezers. There is even a respectable looking snowman (actually made from snowball cookies) in the front yard.

In total, the candied house covers 190 square inches.

When asked why she decided to make such an impressive gingerbread house, Watson stated that “I’d never made one before and I thought it sounded like fun.”

Watson completed high school last year. She was home schooled K-12 and is looking into a career in either engineering or structural drafting.

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