They don’t make ‘em like this nowadays. This 18-pound gingerbread house was built by Brett Rogers for last year’s annual Joy to the Children benefit at the Mirror Lake Inn in Lake Placid. And while it took much longer to make, you can watch it being built before your eyes on YouTube. (Photo courtesy of YouTube)

Ah, gingerbread — that Fig Newton of holiday treats that defies easy definition, that John F. Kennedy of buttery biscuits that dares to be different. To the Gingerbread Man, gingerbread was everything: His larynx, his big toe, his muscular thighs that enabled running that was superior to that of the man, the wife, the pig, the cow and horse. To Hansel and Gretel, the malnourished children of an alcoholic* woodcutter, the witch’s gingerbread house represented an irresistible treat, one that would inevitably leave an elderly woman burning alive in a child-sized oven. And yet to Brett Rogers, gingerbread is an artist’s palette. Only, instead of paint, Brett uses frosting. And awesomeness. Brett created an 18-pound gingerbread house for the 2007 Joy to the Children Benefit in Lake Placid. In his YouTube video, we see the whole house-building process, from start to finish, in just over three minutes. It’s like “Extreme Home Makeover.” Kind of. We see Brett take a traditi