Danielle Martin, grade 10, Kaitlin Grant, Ashley Yurista, and Paige Navman, grade 11, put finishing touches on their North Pole Gingerbread Home at Hempfield High School.
Teacher Kathy Buckwalter and student Joseph DeJesus work on the brick coloring for a fundraiser gingerbread house.
Pretzels and royal icing repair a broken gingerbread wall.
A "money tree" is constructed by Marissa Colosi.
A "money tree" finds a home in front of this building made of gingerbread and royal icing.
Without its roof applied, The North Pole Gingerbread House offers a bird's eye view of the Christmas decorations inside.
Crushed clear candy will be melted to form window panes.
As students gathered around the kitchen island in Kathy Buckwalter's culinary and pastry arts class, they paid close attention to the air-brushing technique being demonstrated. Part of their grade would depend on it.
Buckwalter guided the airbrush delicately over sugar shapes. Her students leaned in closely to watch.
Students in Buckwalter's Hempfield High School culinary arts class are used to learning about baking and cooking, but this lesson is a little different. It will raise money for the Penn State Hershey Four Diamonds Fund, an organization dedicated to fighting childhood cancers.
Four classes have spent the past eight weeks creating gingerbread houses from scratch. Five days a week, the classes are divided into groups, each one responsible for finding a sponsor for a house, designing a house using Google's SketchUp, constructing a mockup of the house, baking a house, building the house and advertising the house through Podcasts and video during school announcements.
In addition, certain techniques had to be used during the gingerbread-house production:
• Gingerbread made from scratch
• Sugar run-in method or color flow method
• Rolled fondant
• Melted hard candy
Businesses, ranging from local grocery stores to law firms, could sponsor a cake for $200 each.
During First Friday events in downtown Lancaster this week, the cakes will be on display at the Lancaster County Convention Center. Early in the evening, the houses will be critiqued by a panel of judges. The public will vote on "The People's Choice" by donating money for the gingerbread house of its choice. The house with the most funds raised wins. After the First Friday event, each of the houses will be given to its sponsor.
As Buckwalter circled the class recently she lent advice to the teen groups, each at a different step in the process.
There were hints offered for coloring the different elements of the house — the thin lines to create brick were best done with piped royal icing and not by using the airbrush technique. The team for Wheatland Federal Credit Union learned this firsthand and also learned that the bricks, once piped, should be uniform size from beginning to end.
Other tips were about baking — the gingerbread is done once the middle of the gingerbread is firm to the touch.
"Does that still spring back?" Buckwalter asked one student who asked if her gingerbread was done. After a test, the gingerbread was returned to the oven for a few more minutes.
Other students were told not to mix gingerbread batches after they were rolled out with the rolling pin.
"Mix them together before you roll it out," Buckwalter said.
House templates should be dusted with flour before being placed on the gingerbread dough or else the dough can easily stick to the template and the house pieces will not be perfect.
Of course, troubleshooting was among lessons learned. The Wheatland Credit Union house group worked together to figure out a way to fix a cracked piece using royal icing and pretzels to reinforce the patched area.
For some, the gingerbread house process was familiar, a family holiday tradition. For others, it was a new experience.
"Last time I made a house was out of a milk carton in grade school," Katelynn Wright said.
"I bake all of the time with my grandmother,' ninth-grader Joseph DeJesus said.
"He's one of the best in the kitchen," classmate Alix Derkey added. "But we have all contributed something to this and have done one of the techniques or something."
It was group effort designing the houses, many of which were made to reflect the sponsoring business.
Team Hot Z Pizza of Landisville worked diligently on designing the inside of the gingerbread restaurant. Complete with a shiny floor — created using crushed and melted candy — the house also features miniature tables that show off tiny slices of pizza made from fondant, a gingerbread bar and a karaoke machine.
"The creativity is really fun to watch," Buckwalter said. "We have everything from a Field of Screams house to a water-testing business house. The kids are really having fun with it."
Make your own gingerbread house
Patti Hudson's Gingerbread
Royal Icing
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