In the spirit of the holidays, we decided to celebrate a handful of our favorite infamous celebrities this year by memorializing them in gingerbread. It’s like making lemonade out of lemons—cookies out of (alleged) crooks.

Some, like Nicole Richie and Martha Stewart, have already done time, while Phil Spector never got that far (his case ended in a mistrial). And then there are those (Dog the Bounty Hunter and Bobby Brown, we’re talking to you) who never seem to stay out of trouble’s way.

Try your hand at making the cookies yourself, or just watch the Making of Gingerbread Spector and observe as he morphs from dough into a full gingerperson. We’ve even included details on how to build a holiday-themed holding cell.

Stencil illustrations by Jason Lee

Follow these instructions to make them yourself

1. Prepare a batch of our gingerbread cookie dough, divide it into two disks, and place them in the fridge to rest. Print out the gingerpeople and cut around the dotted lines so you have your celebrity stencils.
2. Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and arrange the rack in the middle. Working quickly, place one dough disk on a large piece of floured parchment paper and, using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll it into a 1/4-inch-thick circle about 11 inches in diameter.
3. Leaving 1 inch of space between celebs, use the stencils to cut out the dough. Remove the excess dough, gather it together, cover it, and refrigerate it at least 15 minutes before rerolling and using again.
4. Transfer the parchment paper with the cookies to a baking sheet and bake two at a time. Bake about 10 minutes until the cookies are puffed and set if you’re planning to eat them. Bake about 15 minutes until they become dark around the edges if you’re planning to put them on display or set them upright in a holding cell.

5. Once baked, remove the cookies from the oven, transfer them to a rack, and cool completely before icing. Repeat with the remaining dough.

   One recipe of gingerbread dough will yield five celebrities.

All iced up and nowhere to go

1. Make a batch of icing. To get in the icing mood, watch our video.
2. Place the stencil of the celebrity you wish to decorate over the cooled cookie and, using a sharp object such as tweezers, a skewer, or a metal toothpick, punch holes through the stencil into the dough to create an outline to follow while you ice. (You could decorate the cookies freehand, but the outline certainly helps.)
3. Fill a small resealable plastic bag halfway with icing, push the icing down into one corner, twist the bag to force the icing to one side, and snip off the very tip of the bag to create an opening. Now decorate.

A celebrity is nothing without a crib

1. Make two batches of our gingerbread cookie dough, divide it into five disks, and place them in the fridge to rest.
2. Heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and arrange the rack in the middle. Working quickly, place one dough disk on a large piece of floured parchment paper and, using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll it into a 10-by-10-inch square about 1/2 inch thick.
3. Using a straight-edged utensil such as a ruler, push the edges of the dough in to make them as straight as possible.
4. Transfer the parchment paper with the dough squares to a baking sheet and bake two at a time. Bake about 30 minutes until they become dark around the edges. (We recommend you use these merely for display and not for eating.)
5. Once baked, remove the squares from the oven, transfer them to a rack, and cool completely before assembling. Repeat with the remaining dough. One recipe of gingerbread dough will yield five holding cell walls (enough for one holding cell).
6. To assemble the cell, use a rasp grater to sand down the edges of the walls so they fit flush against each other. Take five large candy canes and sand the ends as needed so they are flat and the candy canes are all the same height.
7. Lay down a 12-inch square of cardboard and place a large piece of parchment paper on top. (You are going to construct the holding cell upside down and place it right side up once it is set.)
8. To assemble, start by setting two walls perpendicular to the table at a 90-degree angle so they form an L shape. Use the icing as glue to attach them. Prop the walls up from the outside to help them set. Attach a third wall at a 90-degree angle so that you’ve formed a U shape. Let the walls set slightly, about 5 minutes.
9. Ice one end and one side of two candy canes. These will be the outer two bars. Attach them to the lower corners of the cell with the icing facing the walls. Ice one end of the remaining three candy canes and lay them parallel to the first two candy canes, attaching them to what, for the moment, is the rear cell wall so they are equally spaced, about 1 inch apart.
10. Ice the other ends of the candy canes and attach the fourth wall. Prop up the cell and let it rest until it’s completely set, about 30 minutes.
11. Once the walls are dry and set, attach the last wall to the top using icing as glue and let it rest until it’s completely set, at least 45 minutes to an hour. Turn the holding cell right side up (with the candy canes facing front).