So my edible book contest cake didn’t win anything. There was a critic’s choice – our critic was Raphael Kadushin – and two runners up, plus people’s choice awards in four categories. Come to think of it, nothing I voted for won anything, either.
My cake was just a cake, albeit with stuff on top. The entries that did win were big productions. For example, the edible (?) version of Kafka’s short story, The Metamorphosis, that looked like two giant bugs, with Nori wings and some kind of crumply fish noodles around them, as shards of their cast off shells. Raphael said it won precisely because it looked so inedible.
Kafka
The critic’s choice runners up were a chess board made from 3 batches of brownies, with cast-from-chocolate, both brown and white, playing pieces, for The Chocolate Wars; and a cake typewriter frosted green, with Rollo candy keys, with letters piped onto each one, for a kids’ book called Click Clack Moo. I thought the keys were peanut butter cups, but the daughter of a colleague told me they were Rollo; “I know my candy”, said she.
In the people’s choice category, I might not remember all the winners; I know that one of them was for Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and it was quite clever, really – a pretzel rod stockade protecting vegetables, real food, from onion rings and twinkies on the outside. And the green cow typewriter won again.
Here’s my cake; click the picture to see more views. The peas are marzipan – my right thumb is still a little green from making them; the jello is fruit juice jigglers; the potatoes are really potato, made them into a potato cake to eat for dinner last night; and the meat is a Larabar, sliced thin.
TV Dinner Cake
