LOS ANGELES — The most delicious holiday tradition has become all the rage this year: gingerbread house kits have been flying off the shelves. Baker Erica Tucker knows why.
“People are at home, and need something fun to do with their kids, with themselves,” she said.
For generations, gingerbread and the confectionary cottages built from it have been synonymous with the season, making them one of the most special treats for this time of year.
“It’s a nostalgic smell,” Tucker said. “It warms my insides and makes me feel like it’s the holiday, and what better feeling is there than that?”
Tucker is the owner of Sweet E’s Bake Shop, which she opened a decade ago. This year they’ve seen an uptick in interest in their DIY kits, including their gingerbread houses. She and her staff have baked and sold hundreds of houses this season, which they deliver preassembled because, let’s face it, building the structure isn’t the fun part.
“It takes a lot of time and patience, and you have to let it set before you can actually start decorating,” Tucker said.
Her pro-tip: use royal icing to cement the pieces together, or melted white chocolate which will dry quickly and firmly. “If you are using frosting, it’s going to take forever, and it may never set really hard enough to stay sturdy,” Tucker advised.
Tucker’s love of sweets has passed down to her children Noah and Sophie, who both dove into decorating and were soon elbow deep in colorful frosting. 5-year-old Sophie said the hardest part of the job is not eating the house while she is working on it.
“Super, duper, duper, duper hard,” she said emphatically.
Sophie definitely ate as many gumdrops as she placed on the roof, but this activity doesn’t have to just be a one-way ticket to a sugar high. Tucker points out that it’s easy to sprinkle some learning in as well, engaging your younger children in counting the candy canes or identifying shapes and colors.
“We as parents learned right off the bat in this pandemic that being in the kitchen can be a lesson in and of itself,” she explained. “Measurements, numbers, simple math really.”
Plus, she says it’s great for fostering creativity because when it comes to decorating a gingerbread house, anything goes.
“And do we have to use Christmas colors?,” she asked Sophie. “No,” her daughter answered while leaning over the hot pink shape she’d piped on the house – a unicorn, she pointed out.
While she doesn’t have any rules, Tucker does have some tips, especially if you are decorating with your kids. Number 1: “Plan to get messy and that’s okay,” she said. “Let them decorate as little or as much as they want and let them go at it.”
Number 2: go ahead and lick the spoon. And your fingers. And the piping bag. “We eat as we go,” Tucker laughed, giving up on trying to wipe her children’s multi-colored mouths.
And tip number 3: just enjoy it. “We have to make life fun right now,” she said, “and really these are just special moments that we get to spend with our kids.”
Even if your house crumbles under the pressure of 50 pounds of frosting, the good news is it will taste just as delicious. As Sophie is quick to explain, the best part of building a gingerbread house is eating it.
Sweet advice at any age.