The story behind Alabama’s most beloved gingerbread displays
A gingerbread replica of The Grand Hotel Golf Resort & Spa’s 1940s-era main building stands in the resort's lobby. Chef Kimberly Lyons and her team spent more than three weeks creating the display. (Jennifer Kornegay / SoulGrown)
The best-laid plans often crumble. But it’s OK. Sometimes the deck is stacked against you; the stars are misaligned; the recipe is just wrong. So it was for me the Christmas that I decided to build a gingerbread house. Note, I did not write “decorate.” I was above buying one of the already put-together gingerbread houses. I, the avid cook and all-around kitchen guru that I believed myself to be, would create one from scratch.
Using instructions and templates I’d ordered from a certain maven of the domestic arts who shall remain unnamed, I mixed up gingerbread dough, rolled it out and carefully formed it into walls to bake and cool. I concocted thick and creamy royal icing for the glue to keep my cookie construction together. I even slowly and precisely cooked sugar into a syrup, poured it into gingerbread voids and waited for it to harden into “glass” windows.
After a lot of time and even more labor, my project neared completion. The hour was late and the kitchen hot as I secured the chimney in its place. I was knee-deep in flour, and a smear of icing was holding my bangs off my sweaty brow. I squealed as I took in my masterpiece, wishing someone else was around to pat me on the back. I started gathering all my candy embellishments to add the finishing touches.
And then, I noticed a small crack in one wall. It spread before my eyes and quickly became a full-on crumble. The windows on the back were melting and running down into the marshmallow snow below. Then, with a pitiful thump (that has since come to represent the actual sound of failure to me), the entire roof caved in. I screamed. All the time and energy put into my gingerbread house amounted to a pile of crumbs.
Today, I can laugh about my heart breaking alongside my house and lament the silliness of letting my frustration ruin the rest of my day. Memories of the experience underscore a hard-learned but important lesson: The holidays are about coming together with family and friends, not stressing about finding the perfect present, getting the decorations done just right, preparing the most delicious holiday feast or building a gingerbread mansion. If spending hours on a holiday project makes you happy, go for it. If not, forget it.
If you fall into the “forget it” camp, head out to enjoy the results of someone else’s labors and add some extra merry and bright to your seasonal cheer with a visit to the Gingerbread Jam at the Vestavia Hills Civic Center on Dec. 14.
Creating gingerbread structures can be fun or frustrating. For those who aren’t interested in making their own, Alabama has several opportunities to see creative and elaborate gingerbread works during the holidays. (contributed)
Now in its third year, this fun contest is a fundraiser for the Megan Montgomery Foundation to Prevent Domestic Violence Inc., named after Susann Montgomery-Clark’s daughter Megan. Susann, her husband, Rod Clark, and Megan’s sister Meredith Montgomery Price co-founded the foundation after Megan was murdered by her estranged husband on Dec. 1, 2019, and have transformed their personal tragedy into a nonprofit whose mission is preventing relationship violence before it starts by providing healthy relationship education to young people.
Now until Dec. 12, anyone can reserve a table “lot” at the Civic Center for their gingerbread creation, which they make at home and set up at the center on Dec. 13. Then, on Dec. 14, the community is invited to tour the candy-coated neighborhood and vote on the structures. All proceeds from entrants’ lot purchases, guests pitching in to vote and money from event sponsors benefit the foundation.
The event taps into a special memory for Megan’s family. “When Megan and her sister were little, we started making houses out of graham crackers and then kept doing it as a tradition every year,” Montgomery-Clark says. “It was our holiday thing, and the girls started having groups of friends over, and there would be card tables set up all over the house and kids making houses.” One year, the family made a trip to see the professionally put-together houses in the National Gingerbread Competition in Asheville, North Carolina. “Ours were never that big or fancy, but they served as inspiration.”
And while that contest has strict rules and serious competitors, the Gingerbread Jam is more relaxed.
“Contestants can use graham crackers, can use premade kits or make the whole thing from scratch,” Price says. And some folks team up. “A few local companies decided to have house-making parties for employees and then enter the results,” she says. “We have seven or eight businesses doing that this year.”
The Jam draws a wide range of baking builders. A teen boy entered his edible football stadium constructed with cookies and floored with coconut soaked in green food dye to mimic grass. One of last year’s winners made a gingerbread beach shack with brown-sugar sand. “It was to honor Jimmy Buffett after his death, and I thought it was so cute and clever,” Montgomery-Clark says. Her favorite was a traditional gingerbread house with all the finery created by a father and daughter. “It was just gorgeous,” she says.
The event is light-hearted — “There are so many oohs and aahs and laughs, even as some of our entrants get really competitive,” Montgomery-Clark says — but the foundation’s efforts to tackle a tough subject underpin the feel-good fun. “We use the funds to give schools and nonprofits grants that they use to provide healthy relationship education for students using evidence-based national programs,” she says. The primary target is those in the 16-to-24 age group, as they are most at risk for first-time relationship abuse.
In the last three years, the foundation has donated $230,000 toward these efforts. And students themselves speak to the initiative’s success. “We get outstanding feedback from schools and have students tell us this education was so helpful as they learn to look for the early signs, red flags that show the relationship is escalating, and how to call out abuse among their peers,” Montgomery-Clark says. “Megan didn’t know what to look for; that’s why we are so focused on prevention.”
It’s free to peruse the confectionary creations (last year there were 130), and $1 (per vote) to vote on your favorite for the People’s Choice Award. And if you’re interested in entering the contest, lots are available until Dec. 12, with the finished structure due at the civic center on Dec. 13. Visit gingerbreadjam.swell.gives for more details.
The 2023 gingerbread display at Auburn University’s Tony & Libba Rane Center depicted 13 landmark buildings from the campus, colorfully decorated. (Jennifer Kornegay / SoulGrown)
More delicious digs
Check out these festive gingerbread structures whipped up by some of the state’s best professional chefs and on display all season long.
Grand Hotel Golf Resort & Spa in Fairhope
Now through Jan. 2
Along with her team, The Grand’s Chef Kimberly Lyons recently cooked up the historic hotel’s annual display — a replica of the resort’s 1940s-era main building — in just over three weeks. Decorating the resort’s lobby, it includes 150 pounds of icing, 75 pounds of flour, 25 pounds of sugar, 14 pounds of shredded coconut, 1,000 gumdrops and 30 other kinds of sweet-treat embellishments.
The eye candy is massive, measuring 18 feet long, 7 feet wide and 3 feet at its highest point. In keeping with the property’s tradition, Lyons tucked some hidden gems into the display, small items that speak to the resort’s past, present and future as a relaxed family getaway. Keep a lookout for Lyons’ dog, Nitro, and a butterfly tree, a nod to the annual migration of monarch butterflies along Alabama’s coast.
Auburn Gingerbread Village at Auburn University
Dec. 8 through Jan. 2
Last year, a mini and magically delicious rendition of 13 landmark buildings on Auburn University’s campus graced the space at the front of the higher-ed institution’s Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center. The 2023 display featured the president’s home embellished with M&Ms, peppermints and more, and the Jay and Susie Gogue Performing Arts Center outfitted with candy canes, Mike and Ikes and a gummy bear audience.
The 2024 village is designed and constructed by Auburn University’s School of Architecture students before the buildings are turned over to Chef Dallas Kee, director of pastry operations for Ithaka Hospitality Partners, which operates 1856 – Culinary Residence restaurant in the Rane Center alongside the university. Kee leads the professional culinary team in decorating the village, and this year’s display is sure to be another visual feast.
This story originally was published on the SoulGrown website.
