By Ed Avis
When Lew Stubbs, foodservice director at Dirigo Pines Retirement Community in Orono, Maine, learned about a gingerbread building contest during the holidays, his thoughts quickly turned to a house in his neighborhood. This wasn’t just anybody’s house – it belongs to world-famous horror writer Stephen King.
“The contest was held by Grace Management, which owns Dirigo Pines, and the idea was to base the design on something in the area,” says Stubbs. “Stephen King lives in Bangor, and so do I. His house is just around the corner from my house.”
Lew Stubbs
Stubbs, who has worked at Dirigo Pines for over two decades, has a busy schedule managing the foodservice for the community’s four dining rooms and 180 residents. But a COVID diagnosis shortly after Thanksgiving forced him to stay home for five days. The quarantine time gave him the perfect opportunity to craft his gingerbread masterpiece.
Stubbs is familiar with King’s home, but he went online to find some detailed photos of it to help him with the design of his gingerbread version. He sketched out the details and calculated the sizes of the gingerbread panels he needed to bake.
His next step was to make the dough – from scratch – and roll it out to the proper wall thickness. He baked the panels in his oven at home. He trimmed the panels to the exact size while they were still hot and soft.
“I built the framework of the house starting with the first floor and then worked my way up to the second floor, which has a different layout,” Stubbs remembers. “Everything on the house had to be edible, so for the windows I used waffle paper – which can be eaten – and drew in the window frames with food-grade black marker.”
Stubbs used fondant to create the smooth floor of the porch area on the first floor and the patio of the second floor. Once he finished the main structure – which took him 40 to 50 hours, he estimates – he brought the house into work so his culinary team could help with the exterior walls and landscaping.
His colleagues completed the spooky house with frosting for the decorations, licorice for the sidewalk, little figures made of Rice Krispies treats, and other totally edible details.
“It was really a team effort,” Stubbs says.
Stubbs’ devotion to success with the project was revealed when he noticed that some of the icing on the outside of the house was rough after it hardened: “So I sanded it with a 6-inch orbital sander to smooth down the sides,” he admits.
When everything was perfect he snapped a photo of the house and submitted it to the contest. Grace Management owns nearly 60 communities, so the competition was tough. But the judges were clearly impressed with the effort of Stubbs and his team – they won first place. The prize was a $200 gift certificate for the community’s Activities Department.
The success was especially impressive considering this fact: Stubbs had never before made a gingerbread house!
“This time was a learning experience,” he says. “Next time will be better, because now I know some tricks.”