Along Main Street in Logan the Parade of Gingerbread homes is helping to create a festive candied atmosphere. Each gingerbread house uses the 12 Days of Christmas theme to draw inspiration for their creation. Sugary confections like these have been adorning window displays for more than three decades.
Intricate icing and colorful candies are used to create fairytale-like villages designed to capture this year’s Best of Show award. Suzy Metcalf designed and built one of the spicy bread homes.
“The theme inspired me," Metcalf said. "We were supposed to incorporate one of the 12 days of Christmas. The 'whole partridge in a pear tree' popped into my head. The ideas started coming into my mind and I was really inspired.”
“I do look at Pinterest to get inspiration from other people’s artistic designs. Then I go back to some of my cake designs. Then, I eventually draw a sketch and make a pattern and then start making the embellishments and putting it together.”
Each design incorporates different edible elements. The artist’s have a full range of sugary choices.
“I use a lot of fondant," said Metcalf. "I use white chocolate sometimes to do sculpting. I use fondant for flowers and other sort of two-dimensional and some three-dimensional embellishments. Lately I’ve been really into using piping - just royal icing from a tube.”
Not only do the festive creations draw foot traffic from the community to admire artwork, the creations also create an atmosphere for the artist to connect with their own families.
“It was actually fun," Metcalf said. "In my own family, my grandchildren couldn’t take their eyes off of it. My one grandson said, ‘How can you not eat it?’ and I said, 'Well, I like to look at it.' It inspired me to make some little gingerbread houses for them to decorate, because they were so in awe by it and I wanted them to be able to eat some as well.”