SUGAR GLUE by Susan Micari

That Christmas I was 13, I decided to make a gingerbread house for the family while they were out shopping.  I began in the morning, as soon as they had left.  I had already searched recipes, and found a gingerbread recipe that would make a dough strong enough to build the house but not tough, so that my creation would be crisp and light, buttery and fragrant with spice.  It would be rich with butter, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cloves. There would be cutout windows, with melted lemon candies for stained glass, baked right in.  There would be shutters, and doors, a chimney, and a fence.  It would be decorated with meringue icing, egg whites with cream of tartar, sugar, and lemon oil.  I knew how terrific my mother’s soft, steaming deep-dish gingerbread with lemon sauce was, and how much I craved that desert of winter Sundays.  

Sugar Glue

My house would look as good as it tasted.  There would be candies all over it, and none of the candies I hated.   Silver candy beads, candy buttons in pastel colors that came on long strips of paper, tiny candy canes, and ribbon candy in cinnamon and clove for the fence.  I would use red and green m&ms, and so every bite might have peppermint, or chocolate, or lemon, embedded in soft pillows of snow made of my meringue over buttery, crunchy spice cookie.  I knew I could make this.  I had seen the non-pareil at The Lady Cake Bake Shop on Route 25A, right down the street from Manero’s Steak House.  It was spectacular, and they had decorated theirs with cookies.  Cookie on cookie?  Too thick, too similar.  Nahh, I could do better.

I cut a pattern for the house out of waxed paper; the house was to be huge, 14 inches by 10, if I could do it.  To make sure the house was cut correctly I taped my pattern together, to see if my angles, my sizing was correct.  The chimney pieces were more forgiving, if they weren’t perfect, I could cut the gingerbread when it was still warm, or use more of the pure melted sugar that would be my caramel glue to piece the house together, and then I’d cover it with meringue and powdered sugar, to give the effect of two snow falls, or of snow that has warmed and then frozen again.  A double glaze I wondered if anyone would notice.  I would.

I mixed the dough by hand, but it was hard, as the recipe called for enough flour to make study figures, but not so much that you had inedible cookie.  So I used the mixer to soften butter, added molasses, sugar, honey, and egg yolk, and beat them until they were smooth and shiny, like brown taffy.  Elastic and fragrant, the sugar granules must dissolve so that they don’t leave a distinct crystalline bite to the dough.  No!  Then the flour, and the spices, and my secret: salt and pepper.  Every good baker knows that sweetness must be tempered with salt, and I knew that black pepper was good with sweet spice.  Very good.  My secret.

I kneaded the dough and rolled it out, piece by piece.  There weren’t to be huge wasted bits after I placed my pattern.  You can’t roll cookie dough out twice—the result is tough and floury.  But if I needed more dough than I had measured, the little left over scraps would be fine for shutters, reindeer, and other little bits nobody would eat.  

I placed the pattern out on the dough and with a very sharp knife dipped in water, cut the pieces as I needed them, laying them out on aluminum cookie sheets without edges, so that getting the baked cookie off of them would be a matter of sliding them off sheet at the right moment.   If taken off too soon they would bend on the cooling rack and be spoiled, and if too late, they might continue to dry out in the pan and carbonize.  

The pattern was so big that I had to bake two pieces at a time, carefully switching the sheets half way through the baking from top to bottom shelf so that neither would brown too much and both would bake evenly.  Then, I let them cool enough so that using a very large, flat spatula and icing blade, I could slide them to cooling racks so that they would finish their cooling without warping.  I laid each piece out on the dining room table, on six cooling racks, and when they were dry enough, placed them on parchment paper, to rest before the construction. 

I was all dressed up in my orange striped tee shirt dress, with my special apron over it.  A friend of my grandmother’s who understood real aprons had made it for me.  It protected the chest, and had many gathers to accent the waist, collected under a white chiffon waistband that was wide and ended in long sashes that looked like chiffon horse tails, and that swished attractively at the tush below the big bow.  The fabric was black, with red roses on it, and there were two big pockets, big enough for measuring spoons, or a recipe card, but which I used to hold the dishtowel I draped over my tummy and tucked into each pocket to protect the apron.  The pockets were crosshatched with pink silk embroidery thread, and my name was picked out in stitching over the breast.  My hair was done up, and I had slept in rollers so that it too would be smooth and sassy, curly but loose.  I glanced in the mirror over the bar and liked what I saw.  

It was afternoon when the baking was done, the smells of spice and butter everywhere. I would display the house on the bar that separated the living room from the dining room.  It was backed with a large mirror and would reflect the back of the house, which would be as decorated at the front.  There would be something beautiful to see at every angle.  I cleaned off the bar and put my parents cocktail shaker set in the cabinet beneath, next to their one bottle each of vodka and vermouth, and their silver-rimmed martini glasses.  

It was time to make the sugar glue, and quickly, so I could finish my house before the family returned.  Though some people mixed sugar and water in a heavy cast iron pan and boiled it to the hard crack stage, I used sugar and flame alone.  This was the only dangerous part of the job, for after your flame curled the edges of the sugar into pale lemon puddles that quickly turned to dark caramel, you had to move quickly, stirring the caramel and cutting the flame before it all turned dark brown, or your liquid pool of caramel would turn to hard glass in the pan and you would have to start over, scraping and melting the sugar glass under hot water for long minutes I didn’t have now.   If my attention strayed, and some of the liquid sugar dropped on my wrist, it would be an instant second-degree burn.  I tested the stage by pulling my wooden spoon through the melted sugar before it turned too brown.  A set of tiny spider silk threads rose from the molten lake and hardened instantly.  This was the moment.

Now quickly dipping the side of the gingerbread I wanted to attach, I assembled the walls and roof quickly, without hesitation and I lived inside my creation as it grew.  

The afternoon grew dim and I had to decorate before the family came home.  I poured my candies into little bowls, and mixed my egg whites and cream of tartar, sugar and lemon oil in to a large bowl of fluffy snow.  The powdered sugar was nearby to cover any mistakes and to double-glaze my work with a second snowfall.  I covered my roof with m&ms, the gables with tiny candy canes, the silver beads I saved for the windows and door.  I permitted no gumdrops here, no gelatinous fruity globules that might look good but taste false and ruin the taste of my cookies.  No.  Every bite would be varied and delicious, all texture and flavors complementary and intentional.

I arranged my house and set it carefully on the bar.  I was exhausted.  Just at that moment I heard the family station wagon pull into the drive.  Quickly now, I ran to the living room and pretended to sleep on the couch so I might hear every word my family said about it.  The car stopped, and the doors chunked open. My brothers’ feet hit the asphalt, and I heard the hatch open in the back, the sound of metal singing over metal as my father’s wheelchair was pulled out, and the snap as it opened and locked into place.  The door opened and I heard shuffling feet, stomping, packages dropping.  Then silence.  The smell hung in the air; they couldn’t miss it, could they?

My mother spoke, “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” and then she snapped, “Don’t touch it!”  I heard her go to the bedroom and a few moments later the sound of the Polaroid snapped, too.  Nobody had come into the living room to find me, so I yawned loudly.  My mother peeked in, eyebrows raised in semicircles as I pretended to open my eyes from a deep sleep.  She led me to the bar and posed me in front of my beautiful house.  I have a picture memory of this, me fiddling with some detail of the ginger bread self-consciously.  Mom said quietly, “This is beautiful.  You are a great cook.”  And she looked at me softly, her eyes changing from emerald to some deeper green than seawater, a look like the kiss I craved and so seldom received.