Gingerbread (charity) her marriage, Tessa Fothergill, a mother from London struggling with economic difficulties as a single parent, set up a local self-help group for others in a similar position. Fothergill was featured in the "Sunday Times", and the response from other single parents resulted in the creation of Gingerbread as a grassroots organisation providing community-level support for single parents. The name 'Gingerbread' came about after Fothergill saw a cafe called 'Golden Age Gingerbread' and liked the name. The National Council for One Parent Families and Gingerbread merged in 2007, and relaunched under the name Gingerbread in 2009. Head offices for Gingerbread
Gingerbread house hotels display rival gingerbread houses during the Christmas season. In 2013, a group in Bryan, Texas, USA, broke the Guinness World Record set the previous year for the largest gingerbread house, with a edible-walled house in aid of a hospital trauma centre. The gingerbread house had an estimated calorific value exceeding 35.8 million and ingredients included of brown sugar, of butter, 7,200 eggs and of general purpose flour. The executive sous-chef at the New York Marriott Marquis hotel, Jon Lovitch, broke the record for the largest gingerbread village with 135 residential and 22 commercial buildings, and cable cars and a