GINGERBREAD GEODESICS

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DELIGHTFUL DETAILS

Adding the home's finishing touches turned out to be the most fascinating part of this project. Gingerbread porches, woodsheds, overhanging roofs, balconies, and decks can be attached with icing, while candy-cane pillars and columns will give such creations added stability and strength.

As it happened, detailing the gingerbread dome also proved to be the most time consuming part of the operation. For example, my assigned task of adding the wafer-cookie shingles ("sawed" into small pieces with a steak knife) one by one with frosting glue took a full two days. Once that was accomplished, the whole family joined in to decorate the house with gumdrops, small colored candy "lights", licorice whips, and frosting icicles.

The yard, though, still sparkled with aluminum foil, so-with icing snow-we added the "outside" atmosphere, building drifts around the house and beside the carob-chip walkways. (You can, by the way, use cotton and/or coconut if you don't want to use that much sugar!) Real trees (cuttings from shrubs outside) sprang up on the snow-covered lawn, anchored with icing and toothpicks through holes in the base. Marshmallow trees were planted by the house's front door. Large pretzels became firewood and split-rail fences, and a cardboard mailbox on a pretzel pole was placed near the fence, complete with tiny letters and Christmas cards.

Finally, we added a dog figurine by the mailbox, a small ceramic cat sat on the front porch roof, and a wax snowman smiled in the yard. It was complete! We stepped back and admired our magnificent gingerbread dome home. With light shining through its colored windows and a sifting of powdered sugar snow over everything, the little confectionary dwelling seemed to come alive, and we caught ourselves peering into the windows, as if we expected to see miniature people busy inside. "I wish I lived there," was our common sentiment.

AND THEN

. . . As the days passed, one by one the carob chips disappeared from the walkway. And then the shingles were missing from one corner of the porch overhang. Christmas was over. Little "mice" began nibbling away at the beautiful structure. One day the fence was gone, then one piece of the house, and another, and another . . . until all that was left was a cardboard frame, an aluminum base, and some unforgettable memories of a home made of gingerbread shaped like a dome.

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