Making gingerbread houses is fun, giving them is sweet
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Trudy Tobiason carves out the wall of a future gingerbread house in her Everett kitchen.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald
The walkway up to one of Trudy Tobiason’s homemade gingerbread houses is lined with candy, dusted with sugar and filled with tiny gingerbread people.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald Trudy Tobiason presses a tree-shaped cookie cutter into gingerbread rolled out on her counter in her Everett kitchen.
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Susie Black (left) and Tina Gilson maneuver one of Trudy Tobiason’s gingerbread houses through a door into the garage of Tobiason’s building in Everett. Black and Gilson were taking the house to be raffled off at the Teddy Bear Breakfast, part of the Festival of Trees, an event that benefits Providence Children’s Center.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald Trudy Tobiason instructs a gingerbread house building class with a family who won a silent auction bid for the day-long class in Tobiason’s Everett home.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald Trudy Tobiason instructs a gingerbread house building class with a family who won a silent auction bid for the day-long class in Tobiason’s Everett home.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald Jars and plastic containers full of various candies cover a counter top in Trudy Tobiason’s Everett kitchen.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald One of the gingerbread homes created by Trudy Tobiason features intricate rock-candy walls, a thatched roof made from Frosted Mini-Wheats and tiny animals and people.
The two women from the charity knew this. They moved cautiously, gently carrying a gingerbread house to the elevator of Trudy Tobiason's condominium building.
She watched their every step.
Tobiason, 85, started baking the crisp gingerbread walls in August. She bought two pounds of fragrant chocolate wafers for a roof. She used hard, sweet sprinkles to mimic the rainbow of Christmas lights sparkling on crunchy, cookie trees.
The great-grandmother spent weeks crafting every painstaking detail. One house took 55 hours. Another, 45.
She gave both away for the annual Festival of Trees fundraiser, and her own home immediately felt a little emptier, for a while.
Tobiason has baked, decorated and delighted over these houses for more than 50 years. She never fails to give them away.
“I'm just prepared that they're going to leave.”
When they're done, the houses are almost too good to eat.
She refuses to sell them, even though some have gone for more than $500 at auction. Instead, she gives them away to family members, friends and charitable causes, such as the Festival of Trees, which raises money for Providence Children's Center.
She does this for a simple reason.
“Pleasure,” she said. “I like it if it makes people happy.”
She unveiled them at Christmas to decorate the Waldheim Dining Room, a south Everett restaurant she owned and operated with her husband of 60 years. Dennis Tobiason died in 2006.
The couple, both of German descent, gave their favorite customers the houses at the end of the season. The designs were traditional: brown walls, white icing, a bit of candy.
Over time, that changed.
Tobiason stocked up on food coloring, pastry bag tips and paint brushes. She became well-acquainted with the bulk food bins at Top Foods.
Now her shelves are filled with dozens of jars of sweets: gum balls and sprinkles, Froot Loops and Necco Wafers, licorice sticks and chocolate kisses.
Chewy yogurt drops can make fine noses on snowmen. Frosted Mini-Wheats are perfect for snow-dusted thatched roofs.
“The more you work with it, the more ideas you get,” she said.
Her husband is in those albums too. He loved building houses — and not just out of gingerbread.
The Tobiasons designed their own homes during their retirement. They would hire contractors to pour the cement foundation and install the electrical wiring. The Tobiasons did much of the rest, raising walls, installing cabinets, sweating over carpentry.
Like their gingerbread houses, the homes took time. They spent three years building their first place, a three-story home on 9 acres near Snohomish. They lived there for a few years, sold it and built another. Then another.
Before every Christmas, in each kitchen, they turned simple sheets of gingerbread into elaborate, miniature mansions.
Trudy Tobiason's own houses tend to be more delicate. Once she made a dollhouse, complete with an inch-high rocking chair built from seven tiny pieces of gingerbread.
She thinks of her husband when she makes the gingerbread houses.
While she says the meaning of the giving them away is one of simple happiness, her son, Sid Tobiason, senses a more complex message.
“Love is hard work, and she's willing to work hard to express that love,” he said. “That's how she's expressing love for other people, even people she doesn't know. She wants them to enjoy the house.”
She was prepared to see the fragile houses leave, but still, she grew a bit nervous as two women from the Festival of Trees carried them away last month.
The women carried each of the houses out the door, with Tobiason close behind, offering advice along the way.
The elevator door closed, and the women marveled at Tobiason's gifts.
“These are her babies.”
Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455, arathbun@heraldnet.com
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