Three Georgetown University students won audience- and judge-based prizes for their book-ish baked goods in an annual contest April 13.
The Edible Book Festival, hosted by Lauinger Library for its fourth year, brought together Georgetown community members to bake, judge and eat a collection of baked goods that represented books. Judges — who focused on technicality, skill, originality and creativity — awarded their choice prize to an “Island of the Blue Dolphins” cake, while cookies depicting Emily Henry books took home the people’s choice prize for look and a “Winnie the Pooh” cake won people’s choice for taste.
Kathleen Scalera, an executive assistant to the library dean who helped organize the event, said the festival aims to promote an interest in reading through its unique format.
“The original intent is just to get people excited about books, about reading, about coming into the physical space of the library to kind of celebrate books in a different way than normal,” Scalera told The Hoya. “Obviously, normally we’re coming to the library for books, we’re reading the books, we’re researching from the books, we’re using them for school work, but this is a way to come to the library and experience books in a way that is much more novel.”
Diego Tejada Castillo (CAS ’27) — president of the Georgetown Eating Society, a student club that promotes learning about culture through food — said he enjoyed being part of the festival’s judging panel.
“From this event in particular, I hope people can see the creativity that students at Georgetown have and the different ways that they can express it,” Tejada Castillo told The Hoya. “The books are so multifaceted, both in the creativity of the books that they made, but also being inspired by the book’s themes and also trying to do differences between bread and cake and cookies and stuff like that.”
“I hope that people really understand how hard of a job this was for people that made the cakes and really respect it, because it was awesome,” Tejada Castillo added.
Emma Hartnett (SON ’27), who won the people’s choice prize for her Emily Henry-inspired cookies, said she participated in the event due to her past baking experience.
“I’ve been making cookies like this for about five or six years now and it’s just something I love to do, but I’ve never really done it at school because it’s kind of tedious and takes a lot of time,” Hartnett told The Hoya. “I figured this would be something fun to do, break up the exams that we have going on and just be a creative outlet.”
Harnett iced and designed her cookies to represent six Henry novels: “Happy Place,” “Beach Read,” “People We Meet on Vacation,” “Book Lovers,” “Great Big Beautiful Life” and “Funny Story.”
Malia Odegaard (CAS ’28), who attended the event in support of one of the bakers, Anna Hemmerle (CAS ’26), said she appreciated the range of books depicted.
“I like that all these students came together to make cakes about books, like that’s cool, that’s awesome,” Odegaard told The Hoya. “Some of them are really creative, they’re all different in their own ways, which I like — my friend Anna did one about Harry Potter.”
“Some of them do parts from their favourite books, like this one girl did something called ‘Scum,’ which is cool, there’s a big variety,” Odegaard added.
Hemmerle, who baked a cake based on the Harry Potter franchise, said she entered the contest due to her love of baking.
“I love baking, it’s a big passion of mine and hobby, and my friend, Maeve, sent me that this was happening because she’s really tuned into campus events,” Hemmerle told The Hoya. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to enter, and it’s a good combination of a passion for reading and cooking.”
“Honestly, I’m just happy to have participated, so I feel like I’ve already gotten the best thing I could get,” Hemmerle added.
Scalera said she hopes the event will engage students in reading books and the library itself.
“For the students that participate, I hope that they had a blast making a really fun cake thing because it’s always really fun to do that, and I hope they get a lot of their friends to come in and see what they’ve made,” Scalera said. “For anyone who just stops by, I hope that, really the best thing ever is someone comes and they see a cake or they see a creation that someone has made by a book, maybe they haven’t read, and they’re intrigued by that, and they’re interested in that, and they’re getting excited about maybe reading that book now or getting engaged with reading for fun, as opposed to just coming to the library for work.”
