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"Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul." -philosopher Ernest Dimnet
“Candy, candy, candy, I can’t let you go.” -philosopher Iggy Pop
Gingerbread houses, those perfect little marvels of patience and candy-fantasy, can turn you back into a kid. You look at them and you want to touch them, to see if that Royal icing is hard, or as soft as it looks. How do they make the candy glass? What’s holding up that tower? How did they move the whole thing here without breaking all those fragile pieces? Like a child, you have questions.
The edible mini-manses confer a kind of childish innocence, too. A gingerbread house seems to suppose there’s a larger world where everything from the chimney to the family dog to school, church, and the city park are all made from sugar. The part that we see here is but a typical example of candy architecture in a candy town, by a candy river, in a candy world. And so, metaphorically, we waltz through a Christmas-time earth where people seem less inclined to hate and more to offer charity. The holidays mellow us out, and the world seems brighter and happier. Let’s have some eggnog, donate to a food drive, put on our “thankful” goggles for one turkey-themed night, and imagine a world where goodwill is as easy and happy as a house with chocolate doors and gumdrop topiary. It’s a lovely figment, suitable, perhaps, for only the callow mind of a child, the hopelessly naïve, and those of us who drink eggnog ‘til anything becomes possible.
The best gingerbread houses in this town (which was, incidentally, built on the adult candy known as beer) are erected with spun sugar and love at the annual Gingerbread House Contest to benefit Lydia’s House, at Frontenac Plaza.
This year’s contest theme is “Storybook Holiday Seasons,” for which local chefs and culinary students have been charged with imagining holiday celebrations from classic kiddie lit.
The Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts students’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” tribute (above) is Seussarific. They managed to recreate a joyous scene--all the villagers dancing ‘round a huge Christmas tree--with an amazing degree of detail, and with some seriously tall set pieces that tower over the proceedings. It’s a happy, triumphant piece of food art that should have the theme music from the eponymous cartoon movie piped in from somewhere, or perhaps sit on a rotating base so visitors can appreciate every adorable little candy face.
The St. Charles West High School student team’s “Rudolph’s Adventures” is a spot-on recreation of several scenes the from the 1964 Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation holiday classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Rudolph, Santa, Sam the Snowman, Yukon Cornelius, the Abominable Snow Monster, the “Island of Misfit Toys” broken toys – they’re all here. It rocks.
Pat Keim’s “The Christmas Ball (Cinderella)” features a precious little pumpkin carriage pulled by mice (below left); Lafayette High School’s “Christmas Vacation” sports a house with a roof made from Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal (below right), and Clark W. Griswold’s redoubtable “family truckster” parked in the drive.
Finally, Pastry Chef Sally Sciaroni of Onesto has erected a monstrously huge “Christmas on the Jolly Roger” pirate ship (below) that’s a jaw dropper. This three-masted frigate sailed into Frontenac with cannons, anchors, a plank, a roiling blue sea below, and, for good measure, Captain Hook’s alligator nemesis patrolling the deep just off the port stern. (Rum and the lash are optional.)
You can check out these impressive gingerbread dioramas and others, vote for your favorite, and purchase raffle tickets to win one of them, too, on the upper level of the mall.
But don’t touch them, ‘kay? They are fragile, like… the dreams of childhood. Like… the Rams’ playoff chances. Like…well, you get the picture.
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Gingerbread House Contest to benefit Lydia’s House (providers of transitional housing and counseling for survivors of domestic violence)
Frontenac Plaza, Upper Level, South End
Through Dec. 4, regular mall hours
lydiashouse.org
314-771-4411
