The second year of the Uptown for the Holidays Gingerbread Competition featured several Athens landmark replicas and a model of Hagrid’s hut from Harry Potter. Winners were announced Monday night.
The Christmas music playing on Court Street occasionally snuck into the Athens County Historical Society and Museum as the door continually opened for gingerbread craftsmen to bring in their cookie creations for judging in the second annual Uptown for the Holidays Gingerbread Competition.
The competition is broken into the categories of children, teens, adults, groups and professionals. Judging took place Monday. The first prize for each category is $200. The Athens Uptown Business Association and the Athens County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau each donated $500 for the two grand prize spots for Athens landmark replicas.
Jan Hodson, former assistant dean of the Honors Tutorial College and the originator of the competition, funds the first place prize money in the other categories.
Creating a two-year winning streak, Nancy Mingus won the grand prize this year in the professional category with her daughter Jennifer and their replica of the Athens B&O Train Depot, which her father worked at in the 1960s.
This time, Mingus said she used about six pounds of fondant and spent about 135 hours on her creation.
“We do cakes together, so I know how my mom works and how she thinks,” Jennifer said. “We work well as a team.”
In comparison to last year, Hodson said there was a growth in the amount of historical replicas this year and there were no duplicates. She added she loves the creativity of the competition but wishes more would enter.
“Last year, our teen winner had never done it before, so it can be done,” she said.
Three Hocking College baking students entered their replica of the Ridges — the first gingerbread house they ever built. A light actually flickered from within the building, highlighting all the beading around each window.
“Our main thing was to make everything from scratch just to see if we could,” said Casey Siemer, who is in her second year in the program. “Everything went fairly smoothly.”
One creation was added after the Nov. 1 entry deadline. Sarah Boumphrey was already planning to replicate Cutler Hall but said it was important to her to recreate West Union Street. But things didn’t go exactly as planned.
“I had an 11th-hour crisis and had to redo everything last night,” she said.
The two-and-a-half foot long replica details the storefronts on West Union with the roofs of the buildings represented as a “Union Street Block” design, mimicking the historical Athens Block.
Lindsey Meili, an Athens native, said she enjoys being in the competition. Last year, she recreated the Silas Bingham House, and this year she and her mother won first prize in the group category for “Fairy Christmas.”
“It starts the holiday season early,” she said as she attempted to keep her two young daughters from touching the other gingerbread structures. “The kids get excited about it. We’re going to come look at all of them when they’re in the windows.”
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