IN THIS EDITION: Gingerbread Art Holiday Recipes GTCC Avionics to Assist NORAD December 24th Edna’s Kids Holiday Safety Tips Soldier Care Packages
Articles and Photographs by Carla Kucinski Design and Layout by Cheryl Hemric
Gingerbread Art
Annual holiday tradition tests culinary students’ skills They’re charming, innovative, whimsical and too students are excited to make another house with beautiful to eat. their family and start a new holiday tradition.” The gingerbread house project at GTCC has become a holiday tradition among its culinary arts students. Each year students enrolled in the Baking I class are required to make a gingerbread house either on their own or with a partner and then display it for public viewing in the Joseph S. Koury Hospitality and Careers Center on GTCC’s Jamestown Campus. This year approximately 50 gingerbread houses were on display from Dec. 2 to Dec. 9.
One of those students is Vivian Neal of Greensboro. “This is the very first gingerbread house I’ve made, and I’m 55 years old,” she laughs. “I’m excited about it. It’s like you’re making your own little doll house.”
Neal enrolled in GTCC’s Culinary Arts program after losing her job at an automotive lab where she worked for more than 21 years. Now she’s They are culinary works of art. Each embarking on a second career. Cooking, she says, gingerbread house must be at least has always been her passion, and the gingerbread 12x12, 100 percent edible and project has become the perfect creative outlet for constructed with royal icing or her to sharpen her baking skills. caramelized sugar. Students also are evaluated on their “It is a lot of fun,” she says. “And it’s work, too.” piping techniques, overall Neal and her classmate, Teresa Herbin, have precision and appearance, created a GTCC gingerbread candy store. They and quality of the transformed ice cream cones into Christmas gingerbread and icing. trees, decorated the roof with colorful Skittles and Instructor Michele Prairie sprinkled coconut for snow. They spent close to 15 hours constructing the edible confection. says the fun holiday project gives students “I think we’ve given this little house all the little an opportunity to test love to fix it up,” Neal said. “I don’t know if it’ll be the baking skills they’ve the best, but I’m real excited about doing this, and learned in class, from I’m real excited about seeing the outcome of our making the dough and gingerbread house.” designing the house to whipping up icing No matter the outcome, Neal plans on making and practicing frosting the gingerbread house an annual tradition in her techniques. home. “A lot of the students have “It’s my first (gingerbread house), but it’s not never made a gingerbread going to be my last,” she said. house before and it’s a new experience for them,” Prairie said. “Many of the