The best-laid plans often crumble. But it’s okay. 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, was going to 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 of 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.

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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 Civic Center on December 14.

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 December 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 December 12, anyone can reserve a table “lot” at the Vestavia Civic Center for their gingerbread creation, which they make at home and set up at the center on December 13. Then, on December 14, the community is invited to tour the candy-coated neighborhood and even vote on the structures. All proceeds from entrants’ lot purchases, guests pitching in to vote, and funds 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,” Susann 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 held 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,” Meredith 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 Buffet after his death, and I thought it was so cute and clever,” Susann 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,” Susann 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 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,” Susann 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 still available until December 12, with the finished structure due at the civic center on December 13. Visit gingerbreadjam.swell.gives for more details.

 

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

Now-January 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 different kinds of sweet-treat embellishments.

The eye candy is massive, measuring 18 feet long, seven feet wide, and three 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 Lyon’s 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

December 8-January 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 Ike’s, and a gummy bear audience.

Last year, the structures weighed in at 500 pounds of candy, 400 pounds of sugar, and 20 gallons of egg whites, and required 1,000 hours of construction time. Led by chef Dallas Lee, the pastry teams from the center’s fine-dining teaching restaurant 1856 and The Hotel at Auburn University make and decorate the village, and the 2024 display is sure to be another visual feast showing off the talents of the University’s hospitality faculty and students.