Edible Books

Every year, as a close as possible to April Fool's Day, the International Edible Book Festival is celebrated by bibliophiles worldwide. This year, the Cardinal Stafford Library entered the Boulder Festival with our edible scroll which had a passage from Ezekial, Chapter 3:

1 He said to me: Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this scroll, then go, speak to the house of Israel.
2 So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat.
3 Son of man, he then said to me, feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll I am giving you. I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. He said:
4 Son of man, go now to the house of Israel, and speak my words to them.

Our first attempt at making the scroll out of unbaked phyllo dough and food coloing, shriveled and cracked and quite frankly was not so very edible (uncooked phyllo dough taste like wallpaper paste)




Our second attempt took several layers of the dough that were stuck together with a honey and butter paste, painted with the food colors and then baked at 350 for about 15 minutes - the quote had to be abbreviated but captured the essence of the passage - the proof was in the pudding as they say, because the final scroll was actually quite tasty - at the book festival I watched as one young man literally tore the scroll in half and devoured it before my eyes





the most extraordinary entry at the festival was the chocolate typewriter/pasta machine/book that was sold by the slice - quite incredible and extremely yummy

link to the Boulder Camera video about the show