Kenilworth Train Station Replica Made out of Gingerbread

The iconic train station that sits right in the heart of the village has always made residents of the small village of Kenilworth proud. On Tuesday, one lucky resident will be presented with a 2 foot by 3 foot, on-point replica of the structure...made in gingerbread.

That’s right. The exact dimensions on a smaller scale, constructed using only one of the holiday season’s favorite sweet food product.

The gingerbread train station is currently on display in the window of the Winnetka @properties office at 30 Green Bay Road. Its construction was the idea of Mary Grant, a real estate agent at @properties who has resided in Kenilworth for 20 years and has her prime market in the village.

“I usually just get gifts for my clients - but this year I wanted to do something out of the blue, something for everyone,” Grant said of the holiday season. “I wanted something whimsical, something everyone in the village would enjoy.”

So Grant commissioned Jennie Novakovic, a dessert caterer who owns the Lemon Drop Bake Shop that is run out of her home in Wilmette, to construct the tasty replica.

“I wasn’t sure what I was getting into since I never made one of those before,” Novakovic said, noting that the total time spent on the endeavor from taking photos of the actual train station for blueprints to when she finalized the completed work was “anywhere from 40-50 hours.”

“I began on a Monday and didn’t finish until 4 a.m. on Saturday,” she said. “It was a lot of fun. I really wanted to make sure it looked exactly like that train station and not just any old train station. I had to measure up pieces of building. The stressful part was the assembling, the decorating was fun.”

Grant said she is particularly impressed with the detail included in having the well-known Kenilworth logo looking “exactly how it does on the actual station.”

“When people think of Kenilworth, they think of that train station,” she added. “I think it is one of the prettiest train stations on the North Shore and at the center of town.”

When the finished product arrived at the office, Grant sent a postcard with a picture of it to all Kenilworth residents with a request for them to email her if they are interested in being included in a drawing to win it. She said more than 40 have entered (with some Wilmette residents included, too) and when she randomly selects a winner, she will hand-deliver it to the person’s home on December 23.

“People have gotten such a kick out of it,” Grant said. “The girls at the office have said dozens have stopped by looking at it through the window. The whole office smells of gingerbread.”

Novakovic, who said she will be looking into commercial kitchen spaces for her business specializing in dessert tables for bigger themed events and custom cakes, said that while she has been in dessert catering for some time - this was her first gingerbread house. But having so much fun, and now with experience in constructing something so precise, she is already thinking of a replica to make during next year’s holiday season.

“My suggestion is to make a replica of the Home Alone house in Winnetka with a Michael Jordan cutout and Macaulay Culkin and two guys chasing him,” she said. “That seems like a really fun idea.”