Gingerbread
I’m toying with the idea of moving to Germany to
become a Lebkuchler. I’m already well on my way. For many Christmases
now, my family and I have dedicated countless hours to the creation of
spectacular Lebkuchenhaeusel, or for my fellow non-German speakers, gingerbread
houses. Each year brings a different design: a block of New York City
brownstones, a Cape Cod lighthouse, a replica of our home in England, complete
with its Beatles’ Yellow Submarine theme, and last year’s
Noah’s Ark, which featured an edible stained glass rainbow soaring over
top. In our country, the art of gingerbreading is some thing of an oddity,
relegated to esoteric documentaries on PBS. But in Nuremberg, it is an ancient
and highly venerated trade, marked by the exclusive guild of master bakers, the
Lebkuchler, to which I aspire.
The
gingerbread tradition found its home in Nuremberg because the city sat at an
early crossroads of trade. For centuries, spices were notoriously rare and
expensive across Europe. But trade routes from Hungary in the east and Venice
and the Mediterranean in the south put Nuremberg at a critical junction, and all
kinds of spices were commonplace there, including cardamom, cloves, cinnamon,
white pepper, anise and ginger. Nuremberg merchants were so well known for
their spices that they had the nickname “pepper sacks.” In
addition, though sugar was a precious commodity elsewhere, honey flowed in
abundance through Nuremberg thanks to groups of beekeepers who happened to
settle in the woods surrounding the city. Honey was for many years an essential
gingerbread ingredient; in medieval times making gingerbread was known as
honey-craft.
Nuremberg attracted and
motivated a class of master craftspeople who wanted to be where they could get
raw materials in exchange for their finished products. Gingerbread was no
exception. The gingerbread craft became the elite preserve of the Lebkucker,
and except at Christmas and Easter, no one else was even allowed to make it.
Can you imagine all the poor unqualified fraulines, yearning for gingerbread but
driven to secrecy lest they be charged with conspiracy to bake?!? The horror.
Yet some good did come out of this stern German discipline. The Lebkuchler
teamed with master sculptors, painters, woodcarvers and goldsmiths to create the
most beautiful gingerbread cakes in Europe, and out of this alliance were born
Lebkuchenhaeusel, or “houses for nibbling at.”
Both the building and the nibbling are
echoed at our house every year. Just as the German craftsmen bring their
distinct skills to the table, so do each of us. Sally makes the gingerbread,
using a slightly amended and well-loved recipe from the Fannie Farmer cookbook
which calls for boiling molasses with sugar and butter before adding the flour
and spices. I’m pretty sure it’s the most worn page in the book.
Though I have emerged as the head architect, she and Dad both consult on the
engineering, particularly the mathematical calculations, such as roof pitch.
Betsy is a master at creating our stained glass warehouse, ie: crushing the heck
out of hard candy to form colorful powder, which then melts beautifully into our
window frames to form stained glass. Jacob is new on the scene, but
distinguished himself last year by creating the most exquisite pairs of
gingerbread creatures every to step foot off an ark. Everyone contributes to
the final assembly, bracing walls in place with hands intertwined like a mini
game of Twister as the icing hardens to hold the structure
together.
This year, we chose to build a
boat house. I loved the idea because it presented a few notable challenges,
like merging roofs and creating a river. It also offered interesting
opportunities for design and décor, like rowers in various states of
practice, coxswains, and a coach. The main structure consisted of two houses:
a boat bay and a boat house. The bay was longer and wider than the house, and
featured stained glass on all four walls. The front of the bay had a garage
door with a grid of twelve tiny square windows. In my original concept, the
door swung open on a pivot, but this idea proved a tad too ambitious. The
house, which shared one wall with the bay, was not lit from within. Instead, it
had crossed gingerbread oars suspended over the door, and frosting banners on
its other walls which read “Can’t catch us – we’re the
gingerbread men!”
These houses sat
on a raised platform down from which ran a ramp. Red licorice strings were laid
horizontally to protect gingerbread feet from slipping. The ramp led to a long
dock resting on a glassy turquoise blue expanse of water. We made the river by
melting large quantities of blue and green mints on parchment paper until it
formed a thin sheet of blue. It was lovely – particularly when the
colorful light from the stained glass windows reflected off its surface.
No boat house would be complete without
rowers. We had an angel cookie cutter with outstretched wings, and Dad was
inspired to transform the angels into rowers with their arms over their heads
– lifting a boat as if they were about to put it in the water. I painted
different colored unisuits on each of them – including, as requested by
Sally, one with a big red W for Wisconsin. The boats presented a challenge in
and of themselves. We ended up trying a new technique that emerged as a huge
success. We made a tinfoil form and gently molded a sheet of gingerbread over
it to produce a unified hull. Once baked, we could remove the tinfoil and leave
only a gingerbread shell. It was inspired.
In addition to the boat on the dock,
there was another boat rowing away down the river. This was a double, powered
by the “Dynamic Dewing Duo” as Betsy and I were dubbed during our
illustrious season rowing together during the summer of 1998. I gave us blue
and green uni’s, yellow sweatbands, and oars emblazoned with G’s and
B’s.
Even after years of
practice, our skills are certainly not up to par with those of the Lebkuchler.
Our gingerbread houses are charming, not exact. You can see plenty of icing
dripping down the wall seams, some of the gingerbread shows cracks and
blemishes, and the decor is spotty at best. But despite all of these
imperfections you can also see the love and delight poured into each creation.
Even more importantly, you can taste it, and we relish the nibbling far into the
New Year.
Posted: Fri - December
24, 2004 at 11:59 AM