Gingerbread house. “Pillsbury paid this woman $15,000 for a Betty Crocker recipe!" exclaims Kathy. She reported it to Pillsbury, of course.

I AM SITTING AT TULIE TREJO’S kitchen table, watching her make gingerbread men and thinking about a story I read in the newspaper this morning. It was about a woman who allowed her boyfriend to beat her little girl to death.

Tulie Trejo's first baking contest was at the age of ten, at the Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. Tulie beat out twelve other little girls in a white cake competition.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

Like most readers, my mind skipped over the word “allegedly” as I tried to comprehend how this could have happened. The more I listen to Tulie talk about her family, her neighbors in Chula Vista, and all the cooking contests she has entered, the more I understand the existence of these extremes.

"When you make cookies, you don’t want to be in a hurry. You must use the best of everything.”

Photo by Robert Burroughs

Some families have their roots in the outside world, where the soil is evil and nourishment hard to come by. They try to grow inward, toward a warm and safe center, and sometimes they never make it. Other families start in the kitchen and branch out from there. When the terrain gets treacherous, they can retreat, regroup, and get something to eat. Misery visits every household, but if the family is sitting at the kitchen table, it won’t stay for long.

Tulie has won three stoves, a microwave oven, six hand mixers, a food processor, a deep freezer full of meat, two Mr. Coffees, and an electric rotisserie.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

So I am sitting in Tulie Trejo’s kitchen, at her yellow-flecked Formica table, happy to have a nose on my face. The gingerbread boys, who are wearing that fresh-baked cologne, also seem cheerful. It’s hard to look like a malcontent when your mouth is a Red Hot candy. The eyes, she explains, are raisins sliced in half. Collars and other forms of attire are done with a tube of frosting. I pick up a vial of those little silver beads (to be used as buttons) and am shocked to read that they contain real silver. The label says, “To be used as a decoration only — not to be consumed.’’

Surveying the cookie table, I can pick out Tullie’s entry right away.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

When did this warning start? I ate these beads by the handful as a child, like everyone else, I suppose. Were we silverplating our intestines? Do they really expect us to dig these things out before eating the cookie? Tlilie tells me not to worry. “We used to eat them all the time, too. Sometimes I sit here and watch my kids go by and eat one or two of them, but I don’t say anything.”

Tulie's gingerbread house took her about a week to assemble, working two or three hours a night.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

Tulie is a short woman with a high voice. In her flat, embroidered slippers, it is difficult to get leverage on the kitchen counters. So she pulls out the cutting board and puts it on the table. Tomorrow is the Gingerbread People contest at the Del Mar Holiday Faire, and Tulie — who enters competitions under the name Mrs. Joseph A. Trejo — is experimenting with different cookie cutters and designs. The judges are asking for four cookies of any relationship, and she has chosen the nuclear family — mom, dad, girl child, boy child. She’ll make the final ones tonight, while her husband and two grown daughters are in the living room watching TV.

Tulie bakes and exchanges cookies with the other ladies who live on her street in Chula Vista. There are eight of them.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

Tulie doesn’t like television, so she stays in the kitchen, working on little projects and cooking up dishes for future meals. She tunes in to an all-news station on her kitchen radio and listens for her special number on the KFMB “Frequent Listener” contest. Stuffed in one of her kitchen drawers are pages and pages of lucky numbers (none of them hers) that have been announced since November, along with the names of the winners and how much money they got. Ask her why she keeps track of all these numbers, and she giggles and makes some joke about gathering evidence against the station. The real reason is that Tulie studies every contest she enters and then plays to win.

Her first baking contest was at the age of ten, at the Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. Tulie beat out twelve other little girls in a white cake competition by making a pink cake and topping it with coconut icing. During the next forty years (she won’t give her age, so I’m guessing low), Tulie entered most of the local cooking contests sponsored by newspapers, chambers of commerce, fairs, and food manufacturers. Desserts are her specialty, but she also invents recipes for chili, tuna, and any other foodstuffs that may win her a prize. Her method, she says, is to take an average recipe and add something unusual. It requires a certain courage to put curry and tuna together, but Tulie has won contests with this combination. In addition to a roomful of ribbons and trophies, over the years, she has also won three stoves, a microwave oven, six hand mixers, a food processor, a deep freezer full of meat, two Mr. Coffees, and an electric rotisserie.

Tulie’s youngest daughter started entering food competitions as a child, and the two of them have baked together for years. (Personally, I know very few women who can share a kitchen with their mothers for any congenial length of time. Doing it by choice is another foreign concept. But now I think that Tulie and her daughter are normal, and my girlfriends and I are neurotic oddballs.) She bakes and exchanges cookies with the other ladies who live on her street in Chula Vista. There are eight of them (counting her), and I would guess that most have phones in the kitchen.

TULIE HAS COOK FRIENDS all over the county. They all know each other from years of entering the same contests, the biggest one being the Del Mar Fair in the summertime. Some, like Tulie, have elevated to the creme de la creme of national contests — the Pillsbury Bake-Off. She has been among the hundred finalists on two occasions. The first was 1962 in New York City, when she won some appliances for her fudge-nut layer bars. Pillsbury published the recipe in its contest cookbook, and Tulie received a phone call from an unknown woman who also lived in Chula Vista. “She said, ‘I don’t know how you won. I made your cookies, and they were as hard as a rock.’ ”

The second time she was a finalist was in Miami Beach in 1980. Jimmy Carter was president, which gave Ttilie an idea: use peanuts. “I made the first one really early in the morning and served it at lunch. My husband loved it.” Tulie’s dark-secret cream pie (Pillsbury named it that) contained pudding and dates, as well as nuts. A savvy contestant by now, she incorporated as many of the sponsor’s products as possible. She didn’t win the $40,000 grand prize (a zucchini pie beat her), but she did get a food processor and an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida.

The Pillsbury Bake-off is held every two years, and this February, it’s coming to San Diego. Tulie submitted twelve original recipes in October, but it doesn’t look as if any of them were accepted this time. Tulie’s girlfriend Kathy Specht got the good news from Pillsbury on November 30. She submitted seven recipes, and one of the pies was chosen. “That’s all I can say about it,” says Kathy, who must keep the recipe secret under threat of disqualification.

Kathy met Tulie at the Del Mar Fair in 1973, while Kathy was still aspiring to the big contests. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m talking to someone who’s been in the Pillsbury Bake-off!’ ” recalls Kathy, who started entering cooking contests at the age of twelve. As a teen-ager, Kathy would take the Pillsbury Bake-off cookbook to the library and use the out-of-state telephone directories to find the phone numbers of the winners. Then she would call them just for the thrill of it. The women generally encouraged her to keep baking. Now she subscribes to three newsletters to keep abreast of national contests. In 1982 she became a Pillsbury finalist for the first time, and then again in 1986, when the contest was held at Disney World. This year is her last shot at the $40,000 prize money, as Pillsbury only allows three entries in a lifetime.

Kathy lives with her mother in Carlsbad, and they enter contests together, too. For the last few weeks, they’ve been working on a two-foot-high Victorian gingerbread house for the Christmas celebration at the Hotel del Coronado. The Spechts have been commissioned to do the job but won’t be paid, for fear it would taint Kathy's amateur status and disqualify her from the Pillsbury contest.

The last time the Bake-off came to San Diego was in 1984. Neither Tulie nor Kathy made it into the finals, but they got special permission to attend the event. Walking through the hallway of the Sheraton Hotel on the day of the contest, Tulie, Kathy, and another cook friend saw a photo of the raspberry torte entry. They predicted it would win. Sure enough, it took the second highest cash prize later that day. But after examining the recipe, Kathy became suspicious. It sounded awfully familiar. She looked through some of her cookbooks and finally found a torte with the same ingredients, proportions, and directions, “Pillsbury paid this woman $15,000 for a Betty Crocker recipe!" exclaims Kathy. She reported it to Pillsbury, of course. (So did a half-dozen other people, according to the Pillsbury spokeswoman I contacted. I just had to know if the torte was disqualified. It's wasn't. But the rules were changed, and the person who makes the next honest mistake has to return the prize money.)

Tulie won’t be allowed to attend the contest this year, as Pillsbury is restricting the number of spectators. But she tells me it doesn't really matter as she rolls out another layer of future gingerbread boys. Tulie stresses, once again, the importance of measuring out all the ingredients first, before you start baking. People like me, who soften butter to room temperature by putting it in the oven, could follow this same recipe and turn out a very different dough. People like me scrape the dough off the rolling pin and start adding flour with abandon. People like Tulie are calm and organized, and this is the secret to all their successes. They don’t take shortcuts to save time, and they don’t buy cheap brands to save money. "When you make cookies, you don’t want to be in a hurry," says Tulie. Also: "You must use the best of everything.”

Tulie remembers the cake contest at the Fiesta de la Luna in Chula Vista, which she entered and lost two years in a row. Her daughter Joanne, who was ten years old at the time, noticed that the lady who won both times used Soft as Silk flour. She suggested that her mother switch brands. The next year, Tulie placed first in the contest with a cake made of — you guessed it. She won a free stove. Ever since then, Tulie has taken notes at contests, especially when judges make their comments and critiques. “They’ll tell you how a dessert can be improved or they’ll say, ‘Next year we want to see these cookies on a silver platter or a glass plate.’ Of course, they’re not going to eat the plate, but presentation counts for a lot.”

Tulie has become a recognized repository of baking information and advice in the contest circles. A friend who just started entering contests came to Tulie because she wasn’t winning anything. What was she doing wrong? Tulie had been waiting with the answer: The woman got her sugar, flour, and vanilla from Tijuana, where, she says, the quality of these goods is somewhat inferior.

TULIE’S PARENTS ARE FROM MEXICO, and she is one of fifteen children, all raised in Logan Heights. Her mother, who is now eighty-five years old, is recovering from a stroke. Tulie spends most afternoons caring for her and admits that it hasn't exactly been like a day at the beach. "But it’s your mother, so of course you do it," she says, shoveling the hot gingerbread boys onto a wire cooling rack. She puts a nail through their heads and then threads the holes with a loop of red ribbon. Now they can be used as Christmas tree ornaments, she tells me. I take one home, and somewhere in the Hints from Heloise alcove of my brain, I get the idea of coating him with hair spray. I use the only kind I have, a new “light finish” formula. An unfortunate decision for the gingerbread boy, who loses the top half of his scalp when I carry him across the room. I consult with Tulie later. She says: “Oh, I think shellac would have been better. Then you can use it again. Put it in waxed paper to keep the moisture out, then wrap it in foil, and put it in the freezer. You can keep it for another year, if nothing else happens to it.”

This was the first year for the Del Mar Holiday Faire, a scaled-down version of its summer counterpart. The faire (the extra e gives it that holiday touch) ran from December 10 to 13 and featured the usual assortment of Backsaver Bionic Chairs, break-dancing stuffed animals, and cookware that never cracks, chips, or peels. Only now these inventions are potential Christmas gifts, as several hundred shoppers wander through the stalls on a Saturday afternoon. I’m sitting at the Poinsettia stage, waiting for the judges to start the Gingerbread People contest. The other food competitions — quick bread, yeast bread, specialty bread, coffee cake, confections, and so on — required preregistration back in November. But to enter the Gingerbread People contest, all a person has to do is show up by 1:00 p.m. with the cookies.

Tulie dropped hers off two hours before the contest and went to visit a friend in La Costa. Receiving another ribbon is always fun, but she doesn’t need to be there anymore. Over in the food and crafts display area are two more entries from Tulie: a gingerbread house and a cookie house. Each took her about a week to assemble, working two or three hours a night. The gingerbread house is a beautiful Victorian structure with little people outside. The other house, a more rustic design, is made of square blond cookies and has miniature wreaths in the windows. Each is a work of careful art, but neither has won a prize. The gold ribbons go to a house with a gumdrop roof (how pedestrian) and a Congo hut with shredded wheat biscuits on the top.

Surveying the cookie table, I can pick out Tullie’s entry right away. They are clearly the best ones in the adult category, and that’s not just because I’m writing an article about her. The cookies have a beautifully smooth, light-brown complexion. Each looks a little different, but there’s a definite family resemblance. She trimmed them in only two colors, red and white, and put those lethal silver beads down their front.

The other cookies, in comparison, are either garish or austere. Some are so caked with icing that you can’t see the cookie part. The minimalist ones are dusty with flour and look as though they just walked off a construction site. One contestan violated the spirit of the contest, in my opinion, by grafting Rudolph onto a gingerbread car, putting Santa in the driver's seat, and trying to pass the whole ensemble off as one person. In the children’s category, the entries are truly wacky. Some look as if they’ve been run over by a truck, and others have strange lumps all over their bodies. One gingerbread unit (it’s difficult to determine the gender) has bulging eyes, kinky hair, and crooked smile — all the markings of a cookie that accidentally stuck its finger into an electric socket.

A young mother brings her three children and their cookies to the sign-up table. Each kid is entering the contest, and so are the parents. The eldest child, who’s nine years old, points to one of her father’s cookies. It has red candy spikes coming out of its head. ‘‘This one’s gross" she says. The five-year-old boy announces, for everyone to hear. “My daddy’s not going to win." The mother laughs and looks around for her husband. “He had some fun with these," she tells me.

The contest gets rolling around 1:30 p.m. with the children’s category. A Danish system of judging is used: each entry gets either a bronze, silver, or gold ribbon, with gold being the highest award. The cookies are evaluated on both appearance and taste. The two female judges sit at a table and scrutinize the cookies one at a time. They break off a foot, put it in their mouths, and stare off into space. They discuss their impressions in whispers and then jot down notes. After all the entries are judged, they call out the names over a microphone, and each child comes up to the table to get his or her ribbon. The five-year-old boy wins a gold one. and the judge compliments him on his careful work. His parents look at each other and smile for a long time.

The adult category has ten entries. Ribbons are bestowed upon both men and women, most of them married to each other. “We’re glad to see men baking." says one judge. A special merit award goes to the father with the punk rocker cookie, causing his wife to cover her face with her hands. The gold ribbons are won by the overloaded Santa motorcade, a foursome that looks like Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs, and Tulie Trejo’s entry. “We think it has the best flavor of all the gingerbread today,” the judge says of Tulie’s group, which she describes as “a very traditional gingerbread family.”

Afterwards, one of the judges elaborates for my benefit. “The edges are smooth and clean, and I love the little ribbons tied in their hair. She obviously thought about what she was going to do before she put the frosting on the cookies.’’ Reading over the list of ingredients, the judge attributes the taste to a generous amount of powdered ginger and the addition of an unusual ingredient. “The apple juice in the recipe gave it a real perk," says the judge. “I might steal this recipe from her.”

Tulie's Gingerbread Men

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup light molasses
• 2 tablespoons apple juice
• 2 teaspoons each ground ginger and cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 1/2 cups flour

• Cream sugar and butter together, add eggs; beat well. Add molasses and apple juice. Mix ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt into flour. Stir into creamed mixture, mixing well. Wrap dough in floured aluminum foil. Place in freezer for one hour.

• Remove and divide into fourths. Roll each piece of dough on a well-floured board to one-fourth-inch thickness. Use cookie cutters for gingerbread men or other shapes.

• Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for eight to ten minutes. Remove to wire rack to cool. Repeat until all dough is used.

• For gingerbread men, use currants or sliced raisins for eyes. Red Hot candies for mouths, and a tube of icing for decorations.