Building gingerbread houses provides families with perhaps the yummiest of yuletide traditions. But before they break their houses down to supply several nights' worth of candy fixes, they can enjoy applying their architectural and artistic skills to their sugary shacks this holiday.

Gingerbread houses are most often conceived as box-houses with sloped roofs bound together by white icing and decorated with gummi drops and candy cane pieces. However, no style - or size - of home is beyond the ability of families to sculpt with gingerbread. Victorian homes, mansions and farmhouses are greater undertakings, but still attainable feats - and they provide all the more candy in the end.

Like any architectural undertaking, gingerbread houses are best begun with blueprints. They needn't be as precise as the measurements on a three-bedroom house under construction, but the higher the degree of precision, the lower the chance of your gingerbread house looking like it was hit by a hurricane. About.com suggests cutting the wall sizes out of posterboard and taping the pieces together to provide a rough idea of how well the house will hold up.

Just as the foundation is laid before walls are erected, a portable base for the gingerbread house should be the first part set up. A piece of plywood wrapped in tin foil should suffice, but a baking platter will work as well. The students of Millard Fillmore Elementary in Moravia, who have been collaborating with students at Moravia High School on gingerbread houses for 10 years, build their houses over cereal and shoe boxes.

The gingerbread sheets must be cooled after baking. The thickness of the dough sheets should fall between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch. The 12-by-15 inch size of the baking sheet will likely present the sole restriction on the length and width of the walls.

When time comes to set the walls up, white icing can provide the candied glue. A makeshift pastry bag can be made by pouring the frosting in a zip lock bag, pushing the frosting into a corner and cutting a small hole there. Release the icing by squeezing the bag as you would a container of glue. Any icing used in an adhesive manner should be given 30 minutes to dry.

Building the gingerbread house out of graham crackers rather than gingerbread is a common way to circumvent baking, while still preserving their color and edibility. However, the brittleness of graham crackers presents a disadvantage next to gingerbread, especially with larger and more complex houses where the walls are under weight. Double-up on the layers of crackers to increase their load-bearing ability.

Baking without actual gingerbread is another option; cardboard can be used to provide the house's infrastructure while still using candy and icing to decorate it.

Once the walls have been iced together and in the shape of your gingerbread house, the most imaginative part of the process begins. As you decorate your gingerbread home, dab the underside of any candy pieces with frosting and firmly place it against the intended spot on the house. In the event of wreckage, you can always gobble it down and begin rebuilding.

Staff writer David Wilcox can be

contacted at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net

If you go

What: 21st annual Gingerbread Gallery

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays

Where: 318 Erie Blvd., East Syracuse

Cost: $5 adults, $4 senior citizens and $2 children 12 and younger

For details: Call 471-0593