See how last year’s winners of The Uptown for the Holidays Gingerbread Competition created their gingerbread marvels.
After 10 pounds of gingerbread batches, 12 pounds of fondant and 115 hours of her Thanksgiving break, Nancy Mingus completed her prize-winning gingerbread replica of the Mount Zion Baptist Church, 32 W. Carpenter St.
“I visited (the church) so many times to make sketches that someone thought I was planning to renovate the place,” Mingus, 68, said.
Mingus won the grand prize in the first-ever Uptown for the Holidays Gingerbread Competition in December 2013. This year, Mingus plans to go even bigger with her creation when it all begins again on Nov. 1.
Jan Hodson had the idea for the competition after watching a special about the National Gingerbread House Competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. She said she was fascinated by people’s creativity with such a particular medium.
Last year, Hodson, former assistant dean of the Honors Tutorial College, funded all of the prize money, totaling $1,000. This year, she is only contributing the money for the first place winners in each category of children, teens, adults, groups and professionals. The first place prize money doubled this year to $200 each.
The Athens Uptown Business Association and the Athens County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau each donated $500 for the two grand prize spots for Athens landmark replicas.
This year’s entries will be judged on Dec. 1. This year, the gingerbread houses will remain in the Athens County Historical Society and Museum — where they are judged — from Dec. 2 to Dec. 6. Then, the entries will be on display in Uptown storefronts from Dec. 7 to Jan. 3.
Those storefronts include Little Professor Book Store, the Athens County Commissioners Office and Mountain Laurel Gifts.
“The thing Athens does really well is handmade, creative, one-of-a-kind pieces. The gingerbread competition is just an extension of that idea,” said Paige Alost, executive director of the Visitor’s Bureau, which helps market the competition.
Mingus’ creation is still standing as it did one year ago in her house. The competition requires its contestants to use royal icing, a combination of meringue powder, sugar and water and to spray the gingerbread house with a lacquer so it can be preserved.
She said royal icing dries like cement and added she knew a woman who once patched a hole in her wall with it.
Mingus, a member of Ohio University’s Residential Custodial Services staff, has been baking out of her home for 40 years. She said she was fortunate for being “old and experienced” because it helped her face some of the challenges she came across while building the church. For instance, one roof piece runs almost the entire width of the 18-inch board she constructed the house on, and its weight ended up requiring unseen supports to be built inside the church.
Mingus used fondant to create the roof’s shingle detail, the stone exterior of the church and the nativity scene she placed in the front of the building. Mingus sat and hand molded the figures all while listening to old Henry Fonda and Gene Autry cowboy movies on repeat. Fondant is an icing that is typically stiffer and easier to sculpt.
She even hung a bell molded from sugar in the bell tower.
The main stained-glass window with the flower detail took two hours, she said. To create it, Mingus melted crushed hard candy. To make the wreaths, she used her leaf tip on her icing tool to cover Life Savers candy.
“I’m very big on detail,” she said. “I like for things to look as real and natural as possible.”
Overall, Mingus spent about $75, including the $25 entry fee.
After she won, Mingus’ gingerbread house was displayed in Attractions Hair and Tanning Salon, 19 N. Court St.
“I was a happy camper. I get my hair done at Attractions,” Mingus said. “I had this giddy feeling of ‘That’s my gingerbread house in the window.’ It was quite an honor.”
After having such a good experience, Mingus said she plans to continue entering the competition.
“I think gingerbread houses bring out the kid in all of us,” she said. “(The houses) just add to the overall Christmas atmosphere on Court Street.”
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