Wherever Rosson was stationed, she would take baking classes, whether it was Arizona, California or more exotic locales.
Rosson spent some time in Germany in the early 1990s, where she became enamored with the gingerbread houses displayed in bakery windows.
“I was fascinated with them. I wanted to know how to make them,” she says.
She cracked open a book on gingerbread houses, tried a few recipes and started to build a reputation.
“I started kicking up my creations. I started donating the houses for military fundraisers,” she says. “I knew that people would be buying raffle tickets for them. I wanted them to be worth donating money to.”
Rosson cultivated a specialty in replicas of famous and historical structures.
Her first was a 2005 recreation of the Richmond Hill, Ga., mansion of Henry Ford that was displayed at a retirement village. As a contributing writer for Cooking with Paula Deen magazine, she has also rendered the Southern celebrity chef’s home in gingerbread.
Her favorite creation? That was the train depot for display at the Lincoln library. Rosson put about 400 hours into it: a labor of love.
“I’m an Illinois girl. I love me some Abraham Lincoln. It was a huge honor for me,” she says. “We’re a patriotic family, anyway.”
Family members frequently lend a hand to Rosson’s projects. Her father designed a special foundation board to facilitate the building of the Lincoln depot structure. Her mother has looked after her children while she completed high-profile jobs. Her oldest son, 13-year-old Joshua, crushed up candy to make coal for the depot replica.
All of Rosson’s kids (besides Joshua, there’s also Scott, 11, and William, 8) are naturals at gingerbread building. Each creates an individual house each holiday season.
“I think for the longest time, they thought every mom did it. That was normal to them. They didn’t think it was that big of a deal until I was on Bobby Flay,” she remembers.
That 2007 “Throwdown” episode saw judges declare her gingerbread recreation of Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield, IL., home superior to Flay’s Empire State Building replica.
In recent years, Rosson scaled back the number of houses she produces annually to about 20, mostly for fundraisers. She says she’s careful that it doesn’t engulf her holiday celebrations and family time.
Nowadays, “I put off all gingerbread making to around the first week in December,” she says. “For so many people, it kind of takes over your whole holiday. I don’t want to be stressed out over the holiday.”
Even the Gingerbread Queen herself admits, “You can’t let gingerbread get in the way.”
