Book lovers eat it up

CHENEY – While you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, you may be able to eat your favorite book.

Eastern Washington University’s Friends of the Library group is seeing to that – at the annual Books2Eat: An Edible Book Festival Wednesday at the JFK Library on the EWU campus in Cheney.

“This is just for fun,” said FOL executive committee member Harriet Plucker. “This is a celebration of the library and literature, a celebration of books in a new and different and light-hearted way. We want people to come, judge the entries and then eat them.”

Since 2004, this has been a free public event each spring. Students, EWU employees, members of the public and sometimes professional bakers submit baked goods and other sweet treats fashioned around literary themes. Anyone can stop by from 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday and vote for their favorites, and feasting begins immediately afterward. There are three categories: most creative, favorite creation and professional entry, with prizes awarded.

Information is available at www.ewu.edu/x43059.xml or (509) 359-2264.

Past entries have run from elaborate to simple, Plucker said. Some of the more complex creations have included a Mad Hatter’s multitiered decorated cake with the smallest tier on the bottom (“Alice in Wonderland”), a Gummi Worm creation (“Earthworms”), a pink Rice Krispies pig (“Charlotte’s Web”) and an intricate cake tower with an edible long-haired maiden in it (“Rapunzel”).

Charlie Mutschler, archivist at the JFK Library, appears to be the ultimate minimalist, Plucker observed. One year he made a sheet cake with chocolate frosting and put graham crackers across the middle depicting the Berlin Wall (“The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”). Another year, he frosted a sheet cake in blue and scattered white Life Saver candies on it (“Titanic”).

“We always look forward to what Charlie is going to do,” Plucker said.

Last year, there were 26 literary treats and nearly 200 votes cast. One of the winning entries was themed “The Three Little Pigs,” and featured pig-shaped mini-cakes covered in pink fondant and an accompanying hut and big bad wolf covered in chocolate frosting and colored fondant – entered by EWU student Tracy Schoesler.

The public is cordially invited to this year’s Books2Eat: An Edible Book Festival, and “please come hungry,” Plucker said.