Edible Books Best in Show

At SBCC's Third Annual Edible Books Festival on March 23, this Sweet & Savory chef's culinary creation won Best in Show.

Inspired by: 

So, what is this, what is the "Edible Books Festival?"

It is a competition where one creates an "edible book" which can be inspired by a favorite  character, be based on a pun or a famous book title, or even be in the shape of a book, scroll, tablet, kindle, etc.

As you can see I selected to do "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". Last year I did "Wild Swans", which took the "Judges Choice Award". That's a whole other story...

I was considering doing "Where the "Wild Things Are" but wasn't sure if I could do justice to all of the "Wild Things". Then I had a conversation again with my "eldest". We bantered about a few books like "Heart of Darkness," "Courdory," and a few others. As you can see, quite a range between the two. Then she mentioned "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and it just seemed to click. 

I had it all planned out in my head...

The cake would be a moist guinness chocolate cake with a raspberry chipotle ganache to honor the fire within. It would be in the shape of the girl instead of a plain traditional rectangle cake, the girl would be painted and the dragon tatoo would come "alive".

I was very excited to try my hand at making the dragon. I think I made about 7 heads to figure out the shape and the best recipe to use. I tried: pastillage (too dry), fondant (too soft), molding chocolate (too smooth and to temperamentally temperature challenging) and gum paste (one of the earliest tries but then decided to try molding chocolate, at the 11th hour liked it the best and it is the winner).

Everything was coming together but I was running out of time. I hadn't even started the girl. I knew exactly how I wanted her to look! Thank goodness I ran into a friend who was interested in taking part so she did a beautiful job of hand painting the girl just as I had it pictured.

After the girl was painted it was time for the rest of the dragon. The base of the body was made of two separate pieces of pastillage because it is very light and sturdy when dry. I attached the head to the body with gum paste then piped on all of the scales to each of the pieces. When the scales were dry I was able to add the mane. The two body pieces were placed on the cake with about 4" in between and I piped more scales flat on to the cake so that in the end it looked like the dragon was roaring out of her!

What you can't really see is the paint job and the underside of the dragon belly that was very textural. For the paint job I used some red and blue-green so that it wouldn't look so flat then dusted it with edible gold powder which really "made" it shimmer.

This was one of the best learning experiences, I worked with several different materials and got a minute feel for some of the characteristics of each. I wish I had known about these things last year when I did my first cake! Not too bad for having ever done this twice...I totally had a blast doing it!!!