Marie Porter happily describes her sense of humor as "twisted," so the idea of making a gingerbread model of her tornado-racked house made perfectly perverted sense.
Months had passed since May 22, when a tornado churned through north Minneapolis, toppling trees, peeling off shingles and upending lives. She'd never forget the sight of someone's roof -- a whole roof -- lying in the street, or the neighbor's metal fence throwing sparks from a live wire draped over its links.
But she'd grappled with the memory of how their majestic walnut tree, had fallen on the house, crumpling the roof and demolishing the deck. Dominos of damage had revealed themselves over time -- the cracks, the leaks, the shards of glass in a room that had been vacuumed again and again -- but repairs were made. Porter, a fearless baker who had faced down bridezillas with bravado, was over it.
"I thought we could have a bit of fun."
She and her husband, Michael, measured and drafted templates of their 1928 bungalow, cut gingerbread dough into walls and dormers, then baked the heck out of it. "I'd never made a gingerbread house before," she said. "I knew we weren't going for cookies."
With a pastry bag of frosting, Porter piped tiny bricks across the walls, then stucco and beams, leaving blank the places where the fallen walnut tree would go. The artistry of destruction started to creep her out a bit, but mostly it was fun, finding the right shade of fruit rollup for the tarp.
She melted sugar and poured it into the window cutouts to look like real glass, and even made extra panes that she then shattered, placing the shards in the "yard" and on the small deck off their upstairs bedroom. Only when she attached two pretzel sticks to the place where tree branches had pierced the stucco did she feel herself shudder.
Needing a break, she climbed the stairs in her real house and -- well, here's how she put it in her blog:
