Visitors to

Huddleston Elementary School will be drawn to the third

grade hall today by the spicy aroma of fresh baked

gingerbread set out in slabs on each student's desk.

For the

15th consecutive year, the third graders will build

gingerbread houses from the dense brown sweet bread baked

the gourmet bakery and restaurant, has prepared

gingerbread for the school children since the holiday

tradition began.

Before the

restaurant was built, Schatte participated as owner of

Tendix Bakery in Riverdale.

The night

before the children construct their four-sided

structures, parents volunteer to make pounds of white

icing, which serves as the "glue" to keep the

houses intact. The gooey icing also holds the gumdrops,

miniature candy canes, cinnamon hearts, marshmallows and

tons of assorted sweets in place on and around the fairy

tale cottages.

The

finished products are carefully transported home to serve

as table centerpieces and treasured decorations for

holiday homes.

The

children love this special project and remember the

experience for years after. David Ellis, a 1995 alumna of

the third grade recalls, "It was great. You should

have seen all the candy we had to work with. I used a lot

of marshmallows on my house, along with cinnamon hearts

on the roof. My mom kept it until March. By then it was

really stale, so we set it out in our backyard for the

birds to eat."