14th Annual Gingerbread House Construction Contest

For the fourteenth consecutive year, Northeastern Dining provided students with a much needed respite from studying for their upcoming week of final exams with the Gingerbread House Construction Contest. More than 300 students entered online via nudining.com for the chance to be one of the lucky contestants chosen to participate in this year’s contest.

While Northeastern Dining provided hundreds of pounds of gingerbread, royal icing, and candy to students, some teams took it upon themselves to bring their own edible supplies to make their house unique. Decorations including an eight foot snowman, snowflakes and a continuous loop of festive music gave Stetson West a very holiday feel. Once students were finished creating their masterpieces, each team gave their houses a name that creatively described their work.

Each year after Northeastern Dining’s annual Gingerbread Construction Contest, the completed houses are put on display in Northeastern’s Xhibition Kitchen for viewing and voting by the campus community. This year’s event, the 14th annual, featured 60 gingerbread houses ranging from classically decorated traditional homes to a replica of Gru's house from Despicable Me. This is the fourth year voting has also been done online as @mentions on Twitter and “likes” of a house’s photo in the event’s Facebook photo album each count as a vote. This allowed friends and family from near and far to be able to vote for their favorites as if they were here in Boston.

With the Facebook photos receiving almost 3,000 likes, online voting was once again a huge success and helped to determine this year’s winners. Abby Reed and Anahita Mojahed’s classic candy cane house won them third place. Freshmen Andy Xu and Mara Wallisch’s “Winter Wonderland” grabbed second place and this year’s winners, Ralph Reyes and Susannah Franco, created an elegant masterpiece named "Nancy".

The giving theme of the holiday season is also an integral part of the contest. The first, second, and third place winners received cash prizes of $100, $75, and $50, respectively and Northeastern Dining made a matching donation in the winners’ names to The Greater Boston Food Bank, the largest hunger-relief organization in New England and among the largest food banks in the country. The completed gingerbread houses were also taken to Rosie’s Place, a Boston-area shelter, to bring holiday cheer to the community.