Lauinger Library hosted its third Edible Book Festival to showcase student, staff and faculty members’ literature-inspired baked goods and food on April 8.
The festival featured 14 cakes, cookie platters and loaves of bread, with judges and attendees voting for their favorites. The judges awarded the top three overall winners while recognizing the top five, and attendees voted on a people’s choice award.
Melissa Jones, a reference librarian at Lauinger who co-organized the event, said the organizers decided to establish an edible book festival to celebrate literature creatively.
“We came together, we identified a date, and then it was imagining, ‘How can we get the word out so that our students, our staff, our faculty can actually come together and do this,’” Jones told The Hoya. “It’s just such a cool opportunity to celebrate books and ideas and food, and who doesn’t want to come together for free food?”
“We were thinking about how we could make this the most welcoming and engaging event possible,” Jones added.
The Edible Book Festival first occurred prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the library revived it last year, according to Jones.
Charlotte Hibbert (CAS ’27), who created a multi-tiered chocolate and coffee cake inspired by “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” won both first place overall and the people’s choice award, with 28 out of the 82 attendees’ votes. She said it took 12 hours to create her cake, so she was excited to win because of her cake’s sentimental value and the dedication she put into it.
“Growing up, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ would be what my mother read me at nighttime, and it’s such a great movie franchise,” Hibbert told The Hoya. “I also wanted something that was very visually appealing.”
“I’m very excited,” she added. “I’m glad it went well. I’m so glad I’m taking something home to represent my work.”
During the event, judges and attendees spent the first hour viewing the creations and the next tasting them.
Drew Lambert (SFS ’27), a judge and member of the Student Library Council, a group that communicates between students and the library, said the hardest part about judging was choosing between the different options.
“I think, across the board, everything was really good-looking and solid,” Lambert told The Hoya. “It was just really exciting to see how much energy was involved in this.”
Dani Del Rosal (SFS ’27) created earl grey cookies with lavender-flavored icing, inspired by Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” with portraits of the titular Dorian Gray as decoration. She said she spent six hours creating the cookies and found the competition a fun opportunity to bake.
“I love baking, but I don’t really get to do it that much in college,” Del Rosal told The Hoya. “It was a great excuse for me to bake.”
Of the 14 creations, the children’s books “The Rainbow Fish” by Marcus Pfister and “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle both inspired two baked goods..
Katrina Csaky (SFS ’25) said she and five others created one of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” creations — a six-layer lemon cake with strawberry frosting. Csaky said the six layers represented the different colors of the rainbow, with spring influencing the caterpillar’s colors and flavors.
“I love baking, and I am always looking for some way to do creative things,” Csaky told The Hoya. “I think it’s really hard when you’re down in the dumps with lots of school stuff, so when I saw the flyer, I thought that this would be such a nice way to have a fun passion project.”
“This is just a great way to bring the community together and have a creative outlet coming into the last few weeks of the semester,” she added.
Jones said the organizers hope to make the festival an annual event.
“Hopefully it will get bigger each year, because it’s just a cool opportunity to find out what culinary and artistic skills our students, faculty and staff have,” Jones said.
