Home for the Holidays
She builds sweet memories in gingerbread.
Construction season is heating up for gingerbread artist Johanna Rosson. 
Young William, Scott and Joshua enjoy the buildup to Christmas, creating homes of their own. |
The edible abodes she bakes include a tasteful Tudor. 
Gingerbread grandeur abounds in the Springfield, IL depot Johanna was commissioned to create. 
Quaint cottage sure looks sweet. |
Hansel and Gretel weren’t the only ones tempted by gingerbread. Creative baker Johanna Rosson can’t resist it either.
“For me, making a gingerbread house is part pastry art, part architecture and—most of all—a fun family tradition,” says the energetic mother of three from Fort Hood, TX.
Johanna acquired her taste for gingerbread while stationed in Germany with her husband, Steve, a lieutenant colonel in the Army. She notes, “I was fascinated by the elaborate candy houses I saw in the windows of the Bavarian bakeries and decided I had to try making one.
“My first attempt looked pretty sad. But I was determined.” Johanna made one sugary structure after another. Her housework paid off, and she was soon selling dozens of houses, donating others to charity fund-raisers and teaching gingerbread classes.
“Before long, I decided to challenge myself by making gingerbread replicas of real, historic buildings,” she says. “I’d visit the site several times, take pictures and do detailed sketches I’d use to design my gingerbread patterns.”
Appetizing Architecture
Nowadays, Johanna is acclaimed for creating some of the sweetest real estate in the country. Her all-edible edifices range from a gabled barn and stately courthouse to a railroad depot, measuring 5-1/2 by 4 feet, that took 300 hours to complete. She’s assembled other jaw-dropping properties for national food magazines and appeared with celebrity cook Paula Deen and chef Bobby Flay on their holiday television specials.
“I love seeing the finished product, but my favorite part is the process,” she admits. “After I’ve made paper patterns, I mix up and roll the dough and cut out the pieces for my house. Next, I bake the gingerbread and let it cool. I assemble the house, using royal icing as ‘mortar,’ then decorate it with the most unusual and colorful candy I can find.”
Ribbon candy smoke rises from a graham cracker chimney in her gumdrop-shingled roof. Wafer shutters frame caramelized sugar windows. Her luscious landscape features ice cream cone trees, peppermint lampposts, pretzel fences and a cookie crumb path through a white icing snowdrift.
Christmas Carpenters
“Steve and my stepfather, Dale Gray, build wooden bases for my houses, complete with mini Christmas lights. And my mom, Priscilla, started it all by teaching me to bake,” Johanna explains. “Our sons, Scott, 11, Joshua, 9, and William, 6, are happy to help me with the candy trimming. Each boy also makes a small house of his own that’s fair game for nibbling.”
This past spring, Johanna completed a college degree in recreation, park and tourism studies and hopes to pursue a career in the field. Still, she plans to do something constructive with her sons every holiday season…let flour and sugar fly where they may.
“It’s a labor of love. We put a little of ourselves into every project we make,” she says, nodding at their latest home-baked abode, featuring a gingerbread mom and sons. “That’s us!”
Editor’s Note: For more about Johanna’s gingerbread, find her Web site through ours. “countrywomanmagazine.com/links”
Photos: Jim Wieland; George Hartmann