MHS students build gingerbread houses
Hansel and Gretel be warned
Students in German language classes at Marion High School assembled gingerbread houses Thursday during class.
Such houses are a tradition in Germany, and making them has become a tradition for teacher JoAnn Good and her students.
Class members are Jamie Bernhardt, James Davis, Courtney Geis, Thomas Hett, Savannah Killough, JoAnna McGinness, Amanda Steiner, and Allison Wegerer.
They used a recipe and templates supplied by Good to bake the gingerbread pieces needed to assemble a house. Each student also contributed a sack of candy, marshmallows, or other goodies for decorations.
"All the houses look pretty good this year," Good said. "Usually we have someone who doesn't roll the dough thin enough. If the walls are too thick, they won't stand up."
Davis took a non-traditional route, building an airplane hangar. He formed the gingerbread over a can to get the curved roof.
A stick of gingerbread topped by a Hershey's Kiss was placed in front of the hangar. The paper tag of the kiss formed the windsock. Other candies marked the runway lights.
Good said most students stick with the more traditional house, though one year a student built a gingerbread fort, decorated with soldiers, icing for snow, and red food coloring for gore.
Geis removed red and white candies from her chocolate icing roof, replacing them with Kisses.
"Next year I'm going to make a chocolate gingerbread house," she said.
Construction of the houses moved slowly because most of the students subscribed to the theory of "one candy for the house, one candy for my tummy."
Hett made extra dough so he could bring gingerbread cookies to class.
Based on a random sampling, the houses were quite tasty and unlikely to survive until Christmas.
