Lucy Gellman Photo
Carrie Savage hadn’t given much thought to the culinary implications of Doreen Cronin’s Click Clack Moo when she’d curled up on a sofa and read it to her nieces and nephews.
Then one day last month, her bookbinding teacher mentioned an upcoming event that could marry Savage’s love for baking and her affinity for those quirky typing cows.
The result — a two-layer typewriter cake with Oreo keys, a chocolate space bar, retro green frosting, and white piping throughout — joined over 10 others Saturday morning at Creative Arts Workshop’s 12th annual Edible Book Tea, a weekend art experience equal parts sumptuous and scrumptious.
“I think it’s really come to symbolize a coming together of people from the community around food, and around being creative, which is really the best,” said Paulette Rosen, head of the Book Arts department at CAW.
“I’ve always liked Click Clack Moo and I collect typewriters also, so I like anything kind of old school … I just took it from there,” said Savage at the event, surrounded by pint-sized family members as she cut into the cake — two days, three pans, and hours of cleanup in the making — with great pains.
The tradition of the edible book began in 2000, after California librarian Judith Hoffberg dreamed them up during a Thanksgiving dinner. In the past 15 years, edible books have been celebrated at teas, festivals, and parties across the globe on or around April 1, French gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s birthday.
When the edible book has become an aesthetic and competitive sport, can the good people of New Haven compete with the rest of them?
As it turns out, they can. Brimming with a sense of community involvement, this year’s tea brought together a wide range of literary references, from Billy Collins’ “I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey’s Version of ‘Three Blind Mice’” to Rachel MacDonald’s Food for Thought to Moby Dick’s terrifying whale.
“My teacher read a shorter version of Moby Dick to me, and I thought it was quite weird how he started at the end, but ended at the end, and that’s why I made a Moby Dick cake. I wanted to make the whale with big, jagged teeth because that’s how they explained it. I made him scary,” said Elm Citizen Sam Ridky (pictured below), who designed the Mellvillian wonder with his mom Naomi.
Add to that a suite of traditional and punny favorites that had attendees grinning throughout: an eggy tribute to The Book of Exodus (get it?) with gumdrop bodies crossing through a halved quiche, and a masterful chocolate factory that Roald Dahl could definitely get on board with.
“We wanted to find a story that everybody would know, and something that was doable. It’s a little math and a lot of creativity,” said Aly Heimer, who worked with baker extraordinaire Caitlin Lemar to make a yellow-bricked Wizard of Oz confection, complete with a brownie emerald castle and color blocks of lemon and lime frosting.
The spirit of collaboration extended to the event, the main part of which was eating. Beth Lyons, the cook behind Exodus and a ten year Edible Book Tea veteran, shared her love for the tea as others munched around her.
“It’s a community gathering. It’s an event with no registration, no payment, no committees, no prizes, no competition … it’s just ‘come and have fun and let’s eat.’ I see people that I see at this event every year, and you see the kids who were toddlers when their moms were making things, and not they’re making things themselves. It’s wonderful.”
