The Rural Voice, 1982-11, Page 32RURAL LIVING
Building
gingerbread houses
You could say Pat Martin of Britannia
Road in Goderich is in the construction
business. That business keeps her particu-
larly busy around Christmas time. That's
when the building of gir1gerbread houses
is at their peak season.
Pat Marti.: first started making ginger-
bread houses for her friends. Then she
sold some at a local st're in Goderich,
just up the street from her home Appro-
priately, she calls her little enterprise
"Pat -a -Cakes."
It takes several hours to make one
house and at $12.95 per house, Pat isn't
reimbursed much for her labor but she
says, "1 enjoy making them and as long as
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people enjoy having them, I'll keep on
making them.'
Pat took a cake decorating course from
Judy Woodall in town three years ago and
has a whole photo album full of pictures
of beautiful cake creations which she has
made for every occasion under the sun.
When she and Judy attended a two hour
course at Cakery Decor in London, she
saw p gingerbread house being made.
"I didn't realize how easy they were to
make until 1 saw one being done," she
says.
And it wasn't long before she was ex-
perimenting with her own, starting out
with graham cracker creations before
advancing to actual gingerbread.
Pat uses white styrofoam meat trays as
a base on which to build her houses. Then
she makes her gingerbread (see recipe)
and rolls it out like dough right onto a
pan. She cuts this gingerbread into the
shapes of doors, windows, walls and
chimneys using paper patterns of these
shapes as her guide. The gingerbread is
then cooked and thoroughly cooled.
Her special icing (see recipe) is used like
glue to assemble the house and it can be
used to cover up a lot of mistakes too. It is
applied with a pastry tag.
The pastry bag is the key to successful
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