Local baker and past winner Cassi Frank shares how Hillsborough’s beloved gingerbread competition grew from a small contest into a town-wide holiday tradition
By Rebekah Mann | Photo by John Micheal Simpson
In the weeks leading up to December, Cassi Frank’s 7-year-old twin girls rush downstairs every morning to find what new treasures have been added to their mom’s confectionery creations. “We don’t have an Elf on the Shelf,” Cassi says. “We have Mommy’s gingerbread.”
Even with their excitement, she says her kids know the importance of navigating their mom’s thorough, and sometimes kitchen-obstructive, preparation with care. Cassi – and her family – always looks forward to Hillsborough’s Homes for the Holidays gingerbread competition, the annual contest she’s entered since 2019 and won last year in the adult category.
Beginning the first weekend in December, windows of about 30 local shops in downtown feature locally-made gingerbread houses, plus QR codes for voting, so community members can choose the winners.
The houses stay on display for about a month, but voting closes before the annual Solstice Lantern Walk where the winners are announced. For people interested in touring the entries, a map of the locations can be found on the Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce website.
The tradition began decades ago at the Burwell School Historic Site, until it was moved to the Coldwell Banker real estate office a few years before Cassi first participated – where she was one of six entries. However, in 2020, when the pandemic threatened to cancel the contest, Cassi was determined to find a safe way to keep it alive.
She reached out to Meighan Carmichael, then at Coldwell Banker and now the broker in charge of Hillsborough Real Estate Group. Meighan got in touch with several downtown businesses, and they came up with the solution of displaying the gingerbread houses where the community could view them behind glass and safely from the sidewalk. “It was a real win-win for the town and for the community,” Meighan says.
The competition introduces a new theme annually and continues to attract more entrants. In 2024, Meighan notes, it reached 49 entries under the theme “Dream Houses.” To keep it beginner-friendly, she says the only main rule for the houses is that everything visible has to be edible. Anything inside the house to provide additional support like foam or cardboard, she says, is fair game.
“We really use the term ‘gingerbread house’ very loosely, Meighan says. “It’s a small town, and [we try] to encourage as much participation as possible.”
For people who might be interested in joining the tradition, Cassi says it’s important to remain patient – “and don’t do anything that melts.” With seven years of experience under her belt, she says she’s learned a lot about how to maximize her time during the building process. In the past, she has devoted around 100 hours working per structure each year, but now she says she spends around 40 hours.
“I laugh at myself [thinking back] seven years ago [at] messing something up at 11 o’clock at night,” Cassi says. “Every little error used to throw me back like five hours, and now I just anticipate errors, and I don’t get worked up about them.”
She also says she even takes suggestions from her children. When her girls saw that the snowman on the lawn of her winning “Snow-Kissed Victorian Bliss” was missing a scarf, Cassi says she made an impromptu one out of a pink Starburst.
“It was the cutest thing I’ve ever thrown together, and it was my favorite part of the whole gingerbread house,” she says. “They can’t wait till they’re old enough to really help.”
