A MOTHER gingerly turns to her culinary skills to create a mouth-watering masterpiece to entertain her children every winter.

In what has become an annual tradition each December in the Dubov household, in Durham City, mother-of-four Lara bakes a giant gingerbread house. Using the same recipe, including about 2lbs of gingerbread dough, containing ginger, flour, water, shortening and molassis, she creates a huge Santa Claus house, complete with reindeer-pulled sleigh and carousel.

Having formed the centrepiece of the household's festive decorations, Mrs Dubov's gingerbread house has also been displayed at her children's school, Pelton Roseberry Primary, helping to raise £50 for St Cuthbert's Hospice, in Durham.

In keeping with custom in recent years, it has now been passed on to entertain young patients in the Treetops ward of the University Hospital of North Durham, in Durham.

Mrs Dubov said: "I do a lot of baking, particularly at Christmas, and I decided to make a special gingerbread house for the first time in 1996.

"It's been every year since, I suppose it's now traditional.

"When each year comes round, I know it's going to take around 40 hours to make.

"But I always make time for it. The laundry and hoovering may not get done, but the gingerbread house is now a family custom."

Although entirely edible, Mrs Dubov said she would not recommend anyone samples it, "unless you've gone a week without food on a desert island", several weeks after it was baked.

She did bake plenty of other tasty gingerbread creations, however, all of which went down well with the family and their school friends.