ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Every year, gingerbread fans flock to Asheville, North Carolina, for the National Gingerbread Competition. The contest has been running since the '90s. It challenges bakers from all over the world to construct intricate, edible creations. This year, the competition part of the event was canceled after fallout from Hurricane Helene. But as Blue Ridge Public Radio's Laura Hackett reports, the show still goes on.
LAURA HACKETT, BYLINE: Year after year, contestants at the National Gingerbread Competition prove that nearly anything can be made out of gingerbread.
JOHN COOK: It has to be 100% edible. It has to be 75% gingerbread. And so from there, you know, let their imaginations run wild. Looks like we've got a little lollipop farm going on. That's really cute. And then the tree branch with the giant beehive, and all the little bees doing their work with an overflow of honey.
HACKETT: That's chef John Cook, showing off some of the gingerbread on display at the Grove Park Inn Hotel. Cook has judged the competition the last eight years, where he's seen everything from pirate ships in unicorns to Barbie-themed Dreamhouses. The Asheville resident was excited to put his judge's cap back on this holiday season, but Hurricane Helene had other plans.
COOK: I've never seen flooding like this in my life. We were trapped in our home for three days because of the surrounding flooding. We couldn't even get out of our area. The amount of water was just unbelievable.
HACKETT: After canceling the competition, organizers pivoted to a gingerbread trail that displays more than 40 entries around town. The idea is to bring extra customers to the many businesses struggling right now. Sabrina Miller's rainbow dollhouse sits in the atrium of the historic Grove Arcade, home to dozens of independent shops.
SABRINA MILLER: So I have rainbow stairs, a rainbow bed, my little unicorn portrait here. Everything's made out of gingerbread, made from scratch. Like, the shingles are all made - handmade, hand-textured.
HACKETT: After the storm hit, Miller dealt with power, road and internet outages, but working on her dollhouse offered an escape.
MILLER: I've spent hours and hours - I think probably 150 hours' worth of work on it.
HACKETT: She is from the nearby community of Leicester. Making the rainbow gingerbread house, she says, gave her a sense of control during storm recovery. It ended up being a two-story house, with colorful, modern furniture and a hot tub.
MILLER: I was thinking, well, what would I want in my little cottage in the woods?
HACKETT: A rainbow is also the centerpiece of Julie Andreacola's creation, on display at the Grove Park Inn. It's the ray of hope in an otherwise gritty scene, where it overlooks a yellow house in the middle of storm recovery. Scattered beneath the rainbow are broken telephone wires made out of icing. And the muddy lawn is a layer of edible stevia leaves. The Charlotte resident is a past winner of the competition. We spoke via Zoom.
JULIE ANDREACOLA: I wanted to do something that showed, you know, hope and recovery because one of the things that so impressed me every time we would go, is the amount of people just showing up to help.
HACKETT: She got the inspiration while volunteering at a hurricane relief site, where she saw helicopters deliver aid, so she parked one on the lawn of her gingerbread house. To create the helicopter, she and her husband used a special laser-cutting technique on the gingerbread.
ANDREACOLA: He rolls it out super thin and very precise, and that's how we're able to use the laser.
HACKETT: Andreacola is serious about her ginger craft, but simpler creations are also on display.
(CROSSTALK)
HACKETT: At the Dancing Bear Toys store, mom-and-daughter duo Mikala and Kali Fowler show off their chicken coop.
KALI FOWLER: And then there's Santa on the roof, and then the graham cracker is for the reindeer's body, and then there's Peeps as the trees, and then there's cereal as the mulch.
HACKETT: It was a good distraction to make the house, says Mikala Fowler, because it's been a tough year for people here.
MIKALA FOWLER: It's important to our community to see us being resilient and moving forward, and I think seeing these traditions continue on is part of that.
HACKETT: Next year, the Grove Park Inn plans to get back to its regular competition. But for now, everyone's just grateful to look at some gingerbread.
For NPR News, I'm Laura Hackett in Asheville, North Carolina.
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