A Very Merry MASTERPIECE

AT BERLIN'S HISTORIC ATLANTIC HOTEL, LAURA STEARNS TRANSFORMS GINGERBREAD, ICING AND A LITTLE INGENUITY INTO SPECTACULAR REPLICAS OF THE TOWN'S ARCHITECTURAL TREASURES

At the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin, the holiday decorations come with a few unexpected ingredients: chewing gum, shredded wheat, ice cream cones and enough gingerbread to require a commercial oven.

In the hands of general manager Laura Stearns, these ingredients become miniature versions of Berlin's historic homes and landmarks, complete with clapboard siding, brickwork, manicured landscaping and windows glowing with holiday lights.

Laura has been creating gingerbread showpieces for the hotel for about eight years, beginning with a replica of the Atlantic Hotel itself for a townwide business competition.

“My girls and I cut Trident gum into bricks,” she remembers.

All that gum-cutting paid off. The hotel won the contest. Laura kept building. “Visitors and locals come to see it every year,” she says.

A Recipe for Architecture

Forget the familiar gingerbread-house kit. Laura begins with photographs of an actual building, then constructs a cardboard model using science project display boards. She carefully scales the walls, windows and rooflines, using the cardboard pieces as templates for cutting the gingerbread.

“For it to look like the house, it has to be similar in scale,” she explains.

The baking alone is an undertaking. Laura prepares eight to ten batches of a special gingerbread dough that contains no leavening agent, preventing it from rising and distorting the shapes.

Some pieces are so large that she uses the commercial ovens at the Atlantic. “They won't fit in a regular-sized oven,” she says.

Then comes the decorating. And the materials list gets interesting.

Fondant becomes clapboard siding or cedar shakes, individually scored and layered like actual shingles. Gum transforms into brickwork. Marshmallows and ice cream cones coated with green icing and shredded wheat become shrubs and evergreens.

For lawns, Laura dyes shredded coconut green, toasts it for natural variations in color and finishes the landscape with a dusting of white finely chopped coconut.

The windows are another specialty. Melted isomalt creates clear windowpanes, while Jolly Ranchers melted into the openings of a church replica produce colorful stained glass.

Each project presents a fresh opportunity to experiment. “Every year I try to do something special as a building replica,” she says.

Building Something Sweet

This year's project is personal: a roughly four-foot-long replica of the historic Broad Street home of Mary and Danny Moore, friends of Laura’s who have lived there since the 1960s.

The white house, with its green shutters, generous porch and numerous windows, offers plenty of intricate details to recreate.

Parts of the home date back to the 1700s, Laura says, while the front was built around the time of the Civil War.

For her gingerbread version, she plans to fashion the screened porch using rice paper—a new challenge for Laura, even with her years of experience. “It's a beautiful house,” she says, describing its welcoming appearance and Christmas-ready architecture.

Of course, turning all those individual pieces into a freestanding structure requires patience, precision and occasionally a little help from her husband.

Porches are especially tricky. Columns must be exactly the right height; roofs need proper support; and molten isomalt, used to bond the pieces, hardens almost immediately. “You only have 20 seconds to work with it before it hardens,” she explains.

One year, while assembling a cottage, Laura discovered that a major wall had been attached backward. She managed to pull it loose, repair the damage and keep going.

“Putting it together is always the most stressful,” she admits. Once the house is standing, the stress fades. “After it's done, I love it,” she says.

A Holiday Tradition, Built to Last

Laura typically spends about a month working on each gingerbread masterpiece, squeezing in a couple of hours here and there around her responsibilities at the hotel.

Once complete, the house is transported to the Atlantic, where it sits atop a baby grand piano and becomes a seasonal attraction.

She aims to have each year's creation on display by Thanksgiving weekend, and she leaves it up until after New Year's.

For Laura, who has worked at the hotel for 12 years and whose daughter serves as assistant manager, the tradition is another way to celebrate a place she loves. The real reward comes when guests stop to admire the intricate handiwork and pose for photographs.

“When I see people taking pictures of themselves with it, that is so rewarding,” she says.

And what becomes of the gingerbread masterpiece after the holidays?

There's no delicate dismantling or careful storage for the following year. The structures are secured so firmly to their plywood foundations that hotel employees have to take them outside and break them apart.

“It is so hard you could beat it with a hammer,” Laura says.

After weeks of painstaking work, you'd think watching it all come crashing down would be heartbreaking.

Not to Laura. “I just think, well, I'll make another one.” CS