CAMDEN — The Hartstone Inn and Hideway on Elm Street in downtown Camden is reknowned for its hospitality, accomodations and its proprietors, Michael Salmon and Mary Jo Brink. The inn has also become a place for budding chefs and bakers to learn how to make everything from holiday hors d'ouerves and dishes from France, Italy and Thailand to cooking with lobster and fresh spring ingredients.

For two years, Salmon and Brink have opened their kitchen and dining room to Rockport baker and cake decorator Patricia Moroz, herself known for stunning cakes and gingerbread houses, which sell out each year during the Rockport Garden Club's Holly Berry Fair. Moroz has taught classes on decorating with sugar flowers and last weekend, led a three-hour class on decorating gingerbread houses.

Ten students, all women, signed up for the Saturday class and each took home a fully-decorated two-story gingerbread house, complete with sugar trees, little fodant mice and a blinking light for inside.

Moroz, owner of Starlight Cakes in Rockport, furnished all the ingredients for easily decorating a beautiful gingerbread house — the students supplied the creativity and "muscle" to apply the prepared fondant snowflakes and reindeer, miniature gingerbread men and stars, gold dragees and myriad chocolate and candy decorations.

In the end, it was yet another great way to get into the holiday spirit, while learning a few new tricks in the kitchen.