Donna Rorabaugh has been an amateur baker for most of her life. As a teenager originally from Trafford, she experimented with batters and dough, but she craved more challenging creations. She began baking gingerbread houses under her parents’ roof and hoped to do the same when she bought her own home. One obstacle stood in her path. Her new kitchen was outdated. It wouldn’t do. Her demanding work schedule made a simple remodeling project a long-term nightmare. “It just dragged on for three years,” she said. Instead of letting her frustration torment her, Rorabaugh borrowed a friend’s kitchen and filled the home with the smell of fresh goodies. Rorabaugh began to focus her efforts on constructing gingerbread houses, mostly for charity events and competitions. When Rorabaugh’s kitchen was finally finished, her supporters were sad to see the smells float away, but they knew she was onto something big. “They said, ‘Chef Donna built this at our house.'” Last month, she displayed her most recent creation at the I.H.S. in Greensburg. Her 45-pound edible castle sat quietly in the back of a room and slowly spun in repeated revolutions on its Rice Krispies foundation. Residents and visitors alike admired the intricate details, and they threw repeated questions at Rorabaugh. A golden dragon gracefully rested on top of the castle with its wings draped over the towers, as its large claws held on. Its tail snaked down the castle and rested on jagged chocolate cliffs surrounded by a tumultuous moat of blue and white waves. The dragon peered down between the towers coated with flashy scales constructed from gum paste. A winding staircase hid in the castle, and a small holding cell was visible, too. Rorabaugh allowed her creativity to shine on the project, but she had to follow some strict guidelines. The structure could not exceed 2 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet in measurements and was not allowed to contain any wrappers. The panel of judges also looked for a unique theme, attention to detail and a well-built structure. Rorabuagh’s tower dimensions were modeled off of tubes of wrapping paper. Conveniently, some tubes were different lengths and widths, which allowed her to construct multiple towers with varying dimensions. She tossed the wrapping paper aside and used only the cardboard tubes for her model. Some of her other ideas came from magazines. She modeled the tower’s shingles from a picture of a real house in one magazine and found pictures of a suitable dragon in another. After she rounded up her supplies, she made a model of the structure and then set out to construct her entry with a descriptive flow chart and to-do list. Both reminded her to bake pieces, make bases and pipe edges of towers. “It’s extreme gingerbreading,” she said. She worked 10-12 hours a day for a solid week to complete her masterpiece. She said her timetable was lightning-fast compared to the winner, who spent 100 hours on her entry. “I’m quick,” she said. Rorabaugh’s castle took fourth place at the national competition in Asheville, N.C. It contained milk and dark chocolate, gumballs, graham crackers, malted milk balls, licorice, gum paste, Juicy Fruit gum and cookies. She won $200 for her fourth-place finish and a free night of lodging at the resort where the contest was held. The grand prize winner raked in $1,000. Representatives from about 20 states now participate in the national hobby. “It’s grown quite a bit,” she said. In another competition held in Marietta, Ohio, Rorabaugh was awarded first place and given $1,500. The castle has hitchhiked quite a bit recently from her Rochester Hills, Mich., home, to North Carolina, Ohio and back to Pennsylvania for shows and competitions. It also made an appearance on TV’s “Good Morning America” and received an honorable mention in Good Housekeeping magazine. She credited the truck driver who safely transported her castle and five others to the studios for the television segment. “I wouldn’t want to be driving that truck,” she said with a chuckle. Because of humidity, gingerbread houses don’t have a very long life expectancy, which helps to inspire Rorabaugh to build new creations with saved photographs to remind her of past ones. She estimated her building cost at $100-$200, but fighting the clock was tough. “It’s not expensive to make; it’s time-consuming.”

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