Christmas Memories & Traditions: The Inspiration Behind Death of a Gingerbread Man and a #Giveaway

by Posted on

Posted by Barb, somewhere on Route 95 between Fayetteville, North Carolina and Brunswick, Georgia

The brother-sister writing team known as Lee Hollis are here today to celebrate the release of Death of a Gingerbread Man, the seventeenth book in their Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery series. My novellas been included in two Christmas collections with stories by Lee Hollis, and based on their contributions to those efforts, my mouth is already watering for this one.

There’s a bonus recipe and even more special, a bonus giveaway for three lucky commenters below.

Take it away, Lee!

As the brother-sister writing team behind the Hayley Powell Food & Cocktails Mysteries, we are thrilled to share the release of our latest book, Death of a Gingerbread Man, just in time for the holidays! While we love creating these cozy mysteries, they’re more than just stories for us—they’re full of memories from our childhood growing up in Bar Harbor, Maine, where our series is set. Hayley Powell, in many ways, is inspired by Holly’s life, and many of the supporting characters are based on real people (though we’ll deny it if asked!).

 Writing Death of a Gingerbread Man stirred up a lot of nostalgia, especially as the book is set during the Christmas season. In the story, Hayley’s estranged father unexpectedly reappears, throwing the festive family gatherings into chaos. But the holiday drama takes a darker turn when he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his rival at the gingerbread house contest

This book gave us the perfect excuse to revisit the holiday traditions we cherished growing up, and we’d like to share a few of those memories with you.

One of the biggest events of the season was the Christmas tree lighting at the village green, which felt like the official start of the holidays in Bar Harbor. We’d also head to the annual gingerbread house competition, where the whole town came out to see who could create the most elaborate and delicious-looking houses—just like in the book!

The Christmas season wouldn’t have been complete without visits to the church and hospital Christmas bazaars, and our family was a regular at the craft fair at the town office. Holly and I always looked forward to shopping for gifts at Britts or Ames—though we couldn’t resist using them before wrapping them up! We would act surprised on Christmas Eve, but the secret was out long before.

Another favorite memory is making Christmas wreaths at Butterfield’s. Our dad worked for over thirty years as a lab assistant at the well-renowned cancer research facility Jackson Lab, but every holiday season he would always make a little extra money at Butterfield’s making wreathes. Those wreaths, often shipped out across the country, gave our home a constant smell of pine, which still brings back memories of Christmases past.

Christmas tree hunting was also a tradition—no store-bought tree for us! We would trek into the woods behind Mamie and Grampa’s house in Trenton to find the perfect one. Then, we’d gather at their home for Christmas dinner and our gift exchange, where everyone’s stockings, filled with treats from Carey’s store, were a highlight.

 Now, as a little treat for you, we’re sharing one of Hayley’s favorite gingerbread recipes—perfect for the holidays!

Mom’s Gingerbread with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup molasses

1 1/2 teaspoon ginger

1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1 cup oil

2 cups flour

T teaspoons baking powder

1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degree. Grease your 13×9 baking dish with baking spray.

In a stand mixture, mix your eggs, sugar, molasses, spices, oil, and boiling water until well combined. Mix your baking powder into the flour and add a  little at a time to the batter mixture until its all combined.

Pour batter into your greased baking dish and place in preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

8 ounces room temperature cream cheese

1/2 cup salted butter room temperature

4 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a stand mixer ( or use a hand mixer) beat the softened cream cheese and butter until smooth.

Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and beat again until creamy.

Spread onto your cooled cake using a little or a lot for your preferred thickness.

Readers: Tell us about a holiday traditional or recipe from your childhood. Three lucky commenter below will receive a copy of Death of a Gingerbread Man. Open to North American readers only. We’ll randomly choose three winners two days after the posting. Good luck and happy holidays!

Unknown's avatar

Published by Barbara Ross

Barbara Ross is the author of twelve Maine Clambake Mystery novels and six novellas. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com

80 Thoughts

  1. I love the Hayley Powell series SO much!
    My favorite Christmas tradition memory is when we would make a sour cream rollout sugar cookie recipe and then decorate them with icing. Also every year my mom would make homemade Chex mix that was to die for!

    Like

    1. Hi Edith! The new book has Hayley’s estranged father coming back into the picture after decades away and winds up a murder suspect at a gingerbread house contest during the Bar Harbor Christmas season! Can’t wait to read your next one!

      Like

    1. Well it would be floating ginger bread with all that oil! Sputtering into my late (very late) morning coffee! Elisabeth

      Like

    2. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. It is one cup of oil not 11. That would not make for a very good gingerbread.
      Lee Hollis

      Like

  4. Ohhh i love that recipe, thank you! A new tradition I’ve started with my granddaughters is making gingerbread houses. We’ve been using the kits, but I think we’re ready to start baking our own. So much fun watching them get creative with their houses!

    Congrats on your new holiday book, I love Bar Harbor, especially Acadia!

    Like

  5. Every Christmas Eve the 5 of us kids before we went to bed would fix a plate of Christmas cookies and whiskey bottle with a glass for Santa. My Dad told us that Santa didn’t like milk and whiskey would be his drink of choice. We also left a bunch of carrots out for the reindeer. Also on Christmas morning Dad fixed us grapefruit halves with sprinkled powdered sugar and a cherry on top. Then he would pick up his Uncle Bill to spend the morning and have our Christmas meal. He always got for us kids a box of mini Hershey Peant Butter Cups. We looked forward to it every year. So many memories of Chistmas’s of our youth. Thank you so very much for this chance at your giveaway. This is my favorite series.

    Like

    1. Thank you. I still use the kits. I have not yet made gingerbread to make a gingerbread house your brave.

      Like

  6. the christmas of your childhood sounds lovely. i do hope some of those traditions are still carried on – if nowhere else then in your shared memories.

    Like

  7. A holiday tradition that I still try to observe is the baking of Christmas goodies and then putting a wide assortment into boxes to be delivered to the elderly, shut ins and those that did something special for me during the year. Back as far as I can remember, my mom would bake up cookies, cakes, fried pies and candies of all kinds. Then she would put some of all of it into boxes. Mom and I would delivery them where we were always welcomed with a smile and some conversation. Mom use to explain that the gift of one’s time was often the best present to some. After Mom passed, I continued her tradition. The older I got the more I realized that Mom hit the nail on the head on giving of one’s time. The precious thing about it, it’s a gift that goes both ways. I feel I get as much of a blessing as they do – just as I know my Mom did too. While I have gotten older and slowed down with time, I pray to be able to continue this tradition for years to come.

    Thank you for you Mom’s Gingerbread with Cream Cheese Frosting recipe. Just reading it brought up fond memories of my grandmother’s gingerbread that I loved do much. I’ll be trying it for sure.

    Greatly appreciate the chance to win a copy of DEATH OF A GINGERBREAD MAN, which is already on my TBR list. Can’t wait for the opportunity to read and review it.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

    Like

  8. We’re German so Santa brought the tree on Christmas eve fully decorated but for the tree topper. We got our first glimpse when we returned home from midnight Mass. As the youngest, my dad would hike me up on his shoulders so I could place the angel at the top. After that, we were allowed to open one present, then it was off to bed to wait for morning.

    Like

  10. Congratulations on the new book! Oh, we had so many wonderful traditions. One special thing Mom did was make peanut butter blossoms but would use Brach’s Stars instead of Kisses to make them more Christmas-y. ckmbeg (at) gmail (dot) com

    Like

  11. What wonderful traditions. Your book sounds very special. Our tradition is lighting the menorah for eight nights and eating latkes. I think about those years and miss them greatly.

    Like

  12. The whole family would rent out a great big hall and then each family would bring sort of food for the meal everyone had a great time eating, playing games and talking and it went on for the whole day
    Great looking book looking forward to reading in print

    Like

  13. Crostoli is just one of the Italian baked goods my mother made at Christmas. They look like a flat cracker but the lemony dough is deep fried then coated in icing sugar. Sooo good with tea.

    Like

  14. I love holiday baking! When I was little my grandma always made her special Christmas cookies and I was always in charge of putting on the sprinkles.

    Like

  15. On Christmas Eve, my parents would bundle us up and we would head out to look at the light displays. While we were gone Santa would arrive at our house! I think it was a survival technique my parents devised when they realized that as something of an insomniac, I would be awake much later than they and my sister would be up before dawn! The most fun was the year Santa brought a 4-seat merry-go-round and set it up in the den. Somehow my dad and uncle got my prim and proper grandma on it. I still remember her wild laughter.
    Thanks so much for the reminder and for taking me back to one of my favorite vacations in the Acadia NP area. We stayed in Trenton, but definitely spent some time in Bar Harbor! Absolutely stunning place. makennedyinaz at hotmail dot com

    Like

  16. My family was Jewish, we looked forward to latkes with sour cream and apple sauce on Chanukah. My father would grate the onions & potatoes & Mom did the cooking. After my father’s death, Mom didn’t want to do the grating so tried using a blender – the result was soggy & tasteless. Until she got a food processor, we didn’t have those crispy holiday treats. Today my sister fries latkes and bakes holiday cookies.

    Like

    1. I spent so much time in Trenton that’s where my grandparents lived right on the main road into Bar Harbor.

      Like

  17. We have always done Christmas cookie baking as a family tradition. We spend a weekend together and bake all kinds of Christmas goodies. I cannot wait!!

    Thanks for the chance! Love the cute book cover!

    Like

  18. So many traditions. Driving around to look at Christmas lights. Watching the George C. Scott version of a Christmas Carol. And A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch. Looking at the lights on the Christmas tree after we’ve decorated it.

    Like

  19. Thanks for sharing those happy Christmas memories. I have some great Christmas food memories, too, like homemade fruitcake (the grown-ups’ cake was soaked in bourbon; the kids had their own), and a homemade coffee cake (Stollen, my mother called it) for Christmas morning. But what I loved most was a few days before Christmas when my sister and I would go out with our parents and maybe ten or fifteen other kids and adults and sing carols at the doors in another neighborhood and wish the people who came to the door Merry Christmas. I wonder who picked which neighborhoods we went to. No one left to ask anymore.

    Like

    1. That is a really fun tradition. I have only seen the Nutcracker once I took my girls and they loved it.
      Lee Hollis

      Like

  22. What a fun blog!!! I have faithfully been reading all your cozy mystery books and it always amazes me that each book is even more FUN-tastic than the previous ones. One of my childhood favorite cookies were German gingerbread cookies that my family and I would bake in my southern Chile hometown. They were crunchier and full of flavor. I love all kinds of sweets, and Christmas is like an open invitation to indulge until all the reindeer have arrived back in Santaland😂🤣🥲 Thank you for all the hours of fun to gift to us readers!! Luis at ole dot travel

    Like

    1. I would love your gingerbread cookie. I prefer crunchy cookie over a soft cookie every time thank you for reading.

      Like

  23. Growing up, we decorated inside and out. One tradition we had was to pipe Christmas music outside. My dad made 2 boxed out of wood with one side open. He placed stereo speakers inside each box and they were connected to a stereo in the house. The boxes were decorated li big presents with gold wrapping and big red bows on them. There were small holes in the boxes to allow the music to be heard. They were on each end of the front of our house up under where the roof sticks out over the front facade. Every year my dad would set this system up and hang those glorious presents on the front of our house along with the lights, garland and wreaths. The air around our home was filled with the sound of Christmas Carols being played and we loved It !!!

    Like

    1. I would love your gingerbread cookies. I prefer a crunchy cookie over a soft one any day. Thank you for reading.
      Lee Hollis

      Like

  24. Our tradition was for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Our great aunt had a jello salad recipe made with lime jello, whipped topping, pecans and pineapple that had to be made in a particular Tupperware mold. We each had the mold and made the salad every holiday. 3labsmom(at)gmail(dot)com

    Like

  25. Every year, I make pfeffernüsse with my grandchildren. They can be time consuming, but they are so delicious. I’m happy my grandchildren still enjoy baking with me!

    Like

  26. I haven’t heard of this series before but I love the Maine Clam Bake mystery series and one of my favorite family traditions is watching the national gingerbread house decorating competition on tv so this book (and series as a whole) sounds like it’s about to become my next read!

    Like

  27. I remember my mom would make traditional Puerto Rican dishes and there was bread pudding for dessert. We would get together with extended family and there was always lots of food and music. I have fond memories of those times, especially since many of those involved have since passed on.

    Like

  28. As a young child, I recall that my mother made Christmas cookies. I liked them all, but my particular favorite were the candy cane cookies. There were two kinds of dough, pink and white, and they were wrapped round and round like a candy cane would look. Yum!

    Like

  29. Growing up we also had the tradition of going up into the mountains and hunting for our Christmas tree. We lived on the very northwest tip of California on the coast. We often times would bring a truck bed full of snow (if there was any) back with us to play in at our home. After a full day of that, the evening would come and that is when we would decorate the tree. It usually was myself and my two siblings. After the tree was all decorates, the last thing us three kids did was turn off all the lights in the house and hold hands around the tree and sing “Fah who Doraze” like the who’s in the Grinch.

    Like

    1. I don’t know how to make it state my name on my post 😅 and not sure if you need it but its Alexis Morris

      Like

  30. Can’t wait to read the book & so happy we got to meet in Ashland! Christmas Eve we got to open 1 gift before going to church, driving to look at lights, Christmas morning was cinnamon rolls & hot chocolate, those are the memories that stand out in my mind. The gingerbread looks scrumptious! 😋

    Like

  31. I can’t wait to read this new book. Christmas themes are so much fun.

    Reading all the comments brought back memories of my own holidays. We lived in a small Nebraska town and every year my mom, grandma and I spent a day in Omaha shopping. The now defunct Brandeis store in a thriving downtown was decorated to the max. We’d eat at our favorite spots and truly shopped til we dropped. We had the best time. When I got old enough to legally drink, a family friend taught me how to make Tom & Jerry’s. That’s still my favorite winter drink. Although I like the traditional candies, cookies and turkey with all the sides, Tom & Jerry’s are what completes the season for me.

    Like

  32. We didn’t really have traditions as I was growing up because mom was always following the latest thing the “rich people” did. We weren’t rich. She did it on the cheap. But my hubby, daughter and I have loads of traditions. I’ve told the story of our Jewish daughter hanging a pink pig on our Christmas tree (for 51 years now). We always read Night Before Christmas to her (complete with sound effects and lots of goofy reading) no matter where we are (even by phone if necessary). And pumpkin pancakes start off our Christmas morning.

    Like

  33. I just want to let everyone know that it is one cup of oil in the gingerbread recipe not 11.
    Lee Hollis

    Like

  35. Every September 1st, my mother made an Angel food cake from scratch, of course, for my father’s birthday and I had a child’s Angel Food mini cake pan and got to put some of the cake batter in mine. He always ate mine first. This was in the early 1950s. That was a favorite tradition/memory of mine as I was a Daddy’s girl. She used her Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook which I still have. There were other traditions, but this was my favorite.

    Like

    1. My grandmother made a delicious angel food cake too! One of my happiest childhood memories was scarfing down a giant piece!

      Like

  36. There are two recipes. One is my Grandmother Roy’s pumpkin bread recipe. It is a cherished recipe that I keep and make almost every year. The other receipe came from one of my Dad’s bosses. It is seven layer cookies. It is similar to magic cookies. The seven layer cookies have butterscotch chips. They are very rich, but so good. Thank you so much for sharing. God bless you.

    Like

  37. When I was in my late teens my young nephew made sure we left treats for Santa and his reindeer. I jokingly said to him that we should also leave the light on in the bathroom in case he needed to use it while he was visiting. The kid loved the idea and a tradition was born that I still do to this day, even though I live alone with three cats.

    Like

  38. Your memories resonated with me and brought back my own. Going to the woods with dad to cut the tree, baking cookies with mom. She made liebkuken for dad, though I couldn’t see the point of the candied fruit. I loved the regular gingerbread people and happily crowded as many red hot candies as I could reasonably fit as decoration. Thanks! BTW – how much baking powder? The recipe reads T teaspoons. Thanks for the memories, recipes and opportunity to win a book.

    Like

  39. Mom made her “Christmas Candy” every year the first week of December. It was a chocolate lover’s dream! The recipe begins with 8 cups chopped pecans and escalates from there. 🙂 It was so good! Mom passed away in 2013 so our daughter Kelly has taken up the mantle of the Christmas Candy maker. Our family’s so small now that we half the recipe since normally it makes a ton of candy. It’s a treasured recipe with great memories.

    Like

Comments are closed.