Edible Books Final Exam (Teaching Portfolio) by Tamara O'Callaghan https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f Create an edible book of your own design en-us 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC 2023-02-08 18:15:23 UTC hello@padlet.com The Comestible Digestible Bestiary (Dr. O'Callaghan's entry for the UC Libraries' Virtual Edible Book Festival 2021) ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036859 The inspiration for my edible book:
In our course, we have been playing around with cursive writing, trying to make our own inks at home, and creating “books” out of objects around the house. UC Libraries’ virtual Edible Books Festival gave me the chance to show you that we can do even more! Consequently, I was inspired to “re-vision” a medieval manuscript page from a very beautiful medieval codex: The Aberdeen Bestiary (England, 12th century). Bestiaries were collections of real and imaginary animals, birds, and even rocks with short descriptions of each. I have always loved the “page” (f. 65v) that describes dragons. The illumination depicts a serpent-like dragon tripping and suffocating a wandering elephant for its next meal, so I thought it would be a good design for an edible book. And I dedicated my entry to all of you for inspiring me to think so much more broadly about the book, its construction, and its “consumption” by readers throughout the ages.

The construction of my edible book:
I used the “Denver Chocolate Sheet Cake” recipe from The New York Times, increasing the buttermilk to ¾ cups and the cocoa to ¾ cups as recommended in the recipe comments. I covered the finished 9 x 13-inch cake with a thin crumb layer of vanilla buttercream icing. The entire cake was then covered in an ivory-colored fondant rolled about 1/8-inch thick. Using edible gold icing paint, color icing gel, and edible icing pens for decorating, I painted a rectangle in gold and reproduced in fondant (as best I could!) the illumination of the blue dragon strangling the red elephant, laying it on top of the gold rectangle. Finally, I drew indented lines on the fondant (just as medieval scribes did on parchment) and “wrote” an abbreviated English translation of the Latin text about dragons found in the original medieval bestiary. I even included a “scribal error” – that is, a mistake made by a scribe when copying text – with its correction for authenticity ]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036859 ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036861 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036861 Edible Books: Final Exam Guidelines ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036862 Hungry? The International Edible Book Festival is an annual event usually held on or around April 1, which is also known as Edible Book Day. The global event has been celebrated since 2000 in various parts of the world, where "edible books" are created, displayed, and small events are held. The creations are photographed and then consumed. The festival is held to commemorate "the birthday of French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), noted for his book Physiologie du goût, a witty meditation on food."

For your final "exam," you will create an edible book. There are few restrictions — namely that the creation must be edible and have something to do with a book. Any type of food, raw or cooked, may be used, so do not worry if you do not consider yourself much of a chef. And feel free to get family and friends involved! This exam is meant to be fun and break from the stress of the end of the semester.

Give your edible book a title, and post photos and/or a video to this padlet showing us your process and finished artifact. And include a 200 to 400-word description of your inspiration for your edible book and how you made it.

Need some inspiration? Click on the image above.]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036862 This Cake is Not For You ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036865 I chose to recreate the cover for House of Leaves for my edible book project. I did this with a roommate of mine that can actually bake because I do not have that skillset. We decided to keep it simple, so we landed on House of Leaves because the cover is mostly line work. I have really enjoyed reading House of Leaves recently (it is my research project after all) and I am the only one in my apartment that has had time to read recently, so House of Leaves was the main book that came to mind. House of Leaves is about a house that changes itself. There is a lot more to it but that is the gist. There is a spiral staircase in the labyrinth of the house that becomes fairly important and that is what the cover depicts. If you want to compare the cake to the actual book you can search for House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. For the actual process, my roommate did most of the baking. I mostly helped when it came to putting the design on the cake. It is a white cake with buttercream icing. I feel like the title may need a bit of explanation as well. The first sentence of House of Leaves “This is not for you.” So, the title is a take on that phrase.

]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036865 The Tale of Kieu ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036867 The Tale of Kieu is a famous Vietnamese poem written by Nguyen Du in the 19th century. Thuy Kieu was a super gorgeous young lady who was born in a good family with two other siblings. One day, when she was out and enjoying spring weather, she met an elegant and chivalrous young man named Kim Trong. They quickly fell in love and got engaged. Their relationship was great until Kieu's father got charged for trading liquor illegally (something that he did not do). Kieu decided to sell herself to a brothel so that she had money to save her father as there was no other way for her at that time. She also asked her younger sister Thuy Van to take over her engagement with Kim Trong. In the brothel, Kieu was mistreated badly. One time she tried to escape but did not succeed. Kieu was saved by Thuc Sinh and became his concubine. However, his wife Hoan Thu was jealous of Kieu and tried to do harm to her. Kieu tried to escape again but she was tricked into another brothel. Tu Hai saved her and they lived together happily for a short time until he died in a war. After that, Kieu was forced to marry a mandarin. She was devastated and decided to commit suicide. Luckily, a monk saved her. Kieu's family was better and after looking for her for years, they finally found her. She reunited with her family. Her first love Kim Trong asked her to come back with him but she refused to and decided that they should be friends. 
I like this poem as it shows how hard a life of a beautiful woman is and how she still sacrifices herself for the loved ones. When I think of Kieu, I think about a woman that is beautiful both on the inside and outside. Many people may think of her life as a dark color, but I think her life is colorful. She has been through so many things (both happy and hard things). She sacrifices herself to save her father without thinking that her life would be terrible after that. She is also a strong woman as she has been tricked and harmed so many times but she still tries to escape and find a better life. Her life has been up and down as she has been saved then harmed again. After all, she finally reunites with her family and lives a peaceful life. Therefore, I decided to make something colorful. It does not look like the book cover, but it reminds me of the story. 
I combined everything I love which is fruits and ice cream. I cut a watermelon in half and blend the red part to make watermelon drink. After that, I poured it back into the watermelon and decorated it. I put every fruit I love in (orange, apple, berries). I also put in raspberry ice cream. In the middle, I put in whipped cream and topped it with chocolate chips and caramel. It tastes amazing to me.]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036867 ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036868 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036868 Dad? Where are you? ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036869 Hey guys! I know what you're thinking...isn't Nemo a movie? Yes.. but it is also a book. I have a baby sister who I read this book to practically every night before bed. So when I was thinking about what book I wanted to do, Nemo was the first to come to my mind as am always with my baby sister. Nemo is well known, but I will still overview it. In the beginning, Marlin and his wife go through a traumatic experience of losing all their babies in an attack, and Marlin also lost his wife. He had one egg survive and that grew up to be Nemo. Nemo has a disabled fin (I attempted to portray that in the decoration process). Eventually, Nemo gets lost and captured and put into a tank in a dentist's office while Marlin is in the ocean looking for his son. He meets Dory who has amnesia so she follows Marlin around aimlessly. In my cake, I attempted to portray Nemo in a tank, and Marlin and Dory are "free" (white background). I am not super artistic, so yes that is Dory I tried to put on there next to Marlin. There are a lot of lessons in the book and I think it is pretty eye-opening for children. I like how Dory has amnesia and it teaches kids that it exists, along with Nemo experiencing an environment he is not used to.]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036869 To Kill a Mockingbird Cake ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036870 The book that I chose to recreate through the use of edibles was "To Kill a Mockingbird."  I chose this because this was one of the most memorable books that I have ever read, I still remember it, about 5 years later.  It had a large impact on my reading and life, with the topics and mature life lessons that the author decided to write about. The way that I chose to make this edible was through the use of cupcakes, and I decided on them because I didn't have a pan or the skills to cut a cake in the form of the bird, so I arranged the cupcakes in a rough bird shape and then drew on top of that a mockingbird.
I did about half the work here, my girlfriend was the one that flattened out the white icing and she drew most of the bird because she was worried that I was going to mess it up.  It was a team effort on both our ends and I think that we did a pretty decent job for the amount of time that we were working on it.
It was a fun little project and honestly if I were to do it again, I would spend more time on the actual drawing of the bird and make it as best as possible, but here is my try.]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036870 The Hobbit Hole ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036871 For my edible book project, I made Bilbo’s hobbit hole. I used two pieces of bread, a waffle, a chocolate chip, 2 Reese's Cups, a fortune cookie, a Fruit Roll Up, coffee grounds, a granola bar, jellybeans, Chewy Sweet Tarts, and spinach. I wanted to keep with a sweet theme, but the bread and the spinach had to be used for walls and grass. Sadly, I had nothing to coat the waffle with green to match Bilbo’s beside spinach, so I left it as it was. 

I used the waffle for the primary round door, the chocolate chip for the handle in the middle, the bread for the walls, the Reese's Cups for the windows, and the Fruit Roll Up for the stairs that leads to the door. I tried to use spinach for the overgrowth and the grass with jellybeans and Chewy Sweet Tarts for flowers, but they rolled off the spinach too easily. I tried to make a bench out of the granola bar and the fortune cookie, but it wasn’t working, so I made the sign “No Admittance (except on party business)” that sits in front of Bilbo’s home with the cookie as the post and the granola bar for the sign face. Then, I sprinkled on coffee grounds for dirt. 

Afterwards, I took it apart and saved the candy. 
]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036871 Proust and The Squid ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036872 For this project I got my inspiration from this course textbook since it is something we are all familiar with. The textbook for this course was Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. I had the electronic version of the book and did not get to see the cover of the book very often, but my project was inspired by the cover of it. The cover has some letters in the shape of tentacles and a quote in a circular shape that likely represents the shape of a brain. To create the squid mentioned in the title I cut a banana skin into multiple slices to represent the tentacles of the squid. For the face I just used a pen to draw on the banana skin. I then wanted to create the brain using half an apple using a knife to cut the grooves of the brain. I thought this project represented what we did in this class pretty well. I used a pen to create the eyes of the squid which represents the section of the courses learning about writing instruments and created our own ink. The apple brain then represents the part of the course where we discussed the neurological pathways behind how we learn to read and understand language. 

]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036872 ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036874 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036874 Turtles ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036875 For my final exam, I took inspiration from the book my boyfriend and I are currently reading together. Turtles All The Way Down by John Green is very dear to my heart so I decided to share it with my boyfriend. We haven't finished it yet but he helped me make my edible book nonetheless. My edible book is made out of cookie dough and icing. I made a cookie in the shape of a rectangle to represent the tan background of the book cover. I then used plain vanilla icing to create the spirals. I didn't have any orange food coloring so I took a picture with my I
phone and marked up the picture. I drew the orange spirals on top of my vanilla icing spirals and also drew on the title. I can assure you that my edible book tasted delicious!! I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope everyone considers reading this book. I chose to research rereading comprehension for my research paper so this book fits the theme of my research because I am currently rereading it and learning so much about the book that I missed the first time around. Reread your favorite books!! You won't be disappointed. ]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036875 ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036876 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036876 Beet Generation ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036878 For this project, I randomly grabbed a book that was on one of my bookshelves. I was having trouble figuring out which direction I want to go with the project, and felt like this was the best way to not overthink the concept. My picking was the book Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs. To be quite honest, there was a moment where I thought about putting the book back and trying again. The book itself is interesting, and. the sections can be read in various orders, but when I read the book a few years ago, the plot never appeared clear to me. I enjoyed it but I don’t know what the plot was overall. However, I decided to just go with it. 

When trying to decide what to do, I went with the idea of turning the red velvet cake mix I had into a beetroot as Burroughs was a founder of the Beat Generation. I based the shape of the beetroot off of a Minecraft beetroot as it allowed for there to be a clear and distinct path to follow when it came to cutting into a pan cake. After that I went with the bold yellow and red colors to mark up the cake and put dots around the cake as well as red marks on the yellow dyed strip. The red dye was a challenge as red dye with Cream cheese makes a pink color. What I did was place the dye in certain areas and then use a stick to move the dye around without mixing it in. It took a semi-long time but was worth it. ]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036878 Dr. Suess & the Lorax ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036879 I chose to create my final exam based on the children’s book, The Lorax, written by Dr. Seuss in 1971. I am not a great chef or baker so I chose to pull together different edible pieces to create my final piece. What you can see here is the orange Lorax (made out of cake) with an obviously sad icing face. He is sad because the Truffula trees are being cut down by the Once-ler. The Truffula trees are created out of icing and straws and are laying down on “dead grass” which was portrayed by seaweed wrap. The Lorax tried to reverse the process that the Once-ler and his family was creating by planting more Truffula trees out which I represented using beans. I believe this book, regardless of the audience intended and time created, is a simple representation of what we may become if we are concerned more about ourselves than the world around us. Eventually our greed could cause us to not see what we have until we have already destroyed it.  - Taylor Sturdivant ]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036879 The Road to Reality and A Brief History of Time ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036881 When I first began to think about this project I was a bit perplexed. Most of what I have been reading about in the last few months has been either abstract or related to physics in some way. Hardly anything that could be easily displayed in an edible fashion (especially with my cooking/baking skills). Lucky for me, my grandma is a bit better at baking than I am, and I eventually decided on what I would do. We baked a simple yellow cake, and put creme cheese icing on top. The imagery on the top is a bit hard to discern (but delicious none the less). 

The book(s) that I chose to base my cake off of are Roger Penrose's "Road to Reality" and Steven Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". Both focus on the physics of the universe and talk extensively about the nature of space and time. Penrose's book specifically is incredibly complex, and would take a lot of study for me to fully grasp. The cake is supposed to depict a night sky, with the white drops representing stars. People have been inspired by the night sky all over the world, and to this day people still stare up to it at night and wonder about the universe. ]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036881 Game of Thrones: Fire and Blood ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036882 My cake was inspired by George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood. Fire and Blood is about the history of House Targaryen and is related to ASOIAF series. I really enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire series and I have been rereading some of the books lately, so I decided it would be nice to create a cake based on the overall series. I decided to add a red dragon breathing fire on the cake and I include the GOT at the bottom to represent “Game of Thrones”. I included it, because, I think most people would recognize the acronym. Baking the cake was the easy part as I just made a simple two layer round cake. I added two layers of vanilla icing and then I used various colors of icing and some food color to add orange, red, and yellow for the fire. I used a marbling effect to create the fire, which I think looks pretty cool. To make the dragon I added a black icing outline and then added red. I used a toothpick to swirl the black and red together to add some dimension and create the look of some spiked, rough, dragon-like texture. Decorating the cake was a lot harder than I thought and I’m not happy with the dragon, but I thought it was very fun to do. It was the best I could do. My younger sisters helped me with some of the decorating and my family thought the cake tasted good. I on the other hand do not really like cake, so I didn’t eat it. 


]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036882 Life of Pi(e) ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036886 Pi is perhaps one of the most beautiful discoveries of Mathematics. Simply, it's the ratio of Area to the diameter of any circle. What's interesting about pi (3.14159265359...) is that there are infinitely many decimals in it. Similarly, the book life of pi is another beautiful book which explores the infinite possibilities of Life. Here's my attempt towards pi for our final exam.

P.S I didn't make this pie.]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036886 Twilight Saga: Midnight Sun ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036887 I am a fan of the Twilight Saga, so I decided to recreate the book cover of "Midnight Sun" by Stephanie Meyer. Unlike previous books in which Bella Swan was the narrator, this story was told from Edward's perspective. The pomegranate references the Hades and Persephone myth: Hades is the King of the Underworld, and he falls in love with Persephone. When Persephone is stuck in the underworld, she refuses to eat or drink anything. When Hades allows her to visit her mother, she eats six seeds of the underworld fruit - the pomegranate. As a vampire, Edward sees himself as dark and neither clean nor worthy of Bella, who is just a human being. Yet, Edward cannot resist Bella, and once Bella tries the fruit, she will be trapped in Edward’s world. This story centers around how Edward and Bella meet and fall in love from Edward’s perspective. 

I got my boyfriend involved in making this edible book cover since he is very skillful, and he is also a fan of the Twilight Saga. I bought a chocolate birthday cake from store, and we tried cutting the pomegranate to make it as close to the original cover as possible. We used yogurt to create the title and the author’s name. We had a lot of fun doing this assignment.



]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036887 ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036889 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036889 ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036890 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036890 An Absolutely (un)Remarkable Cake ocallaghant4 https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036891 This cake, while not well done, represents a main focus of one of my favorite books, “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.” I chose this book to represent because while this was Hank Green’s first book, this is my first cake (I am clearly not much of a baker). The process was simply to make a cake that somewhat represented the statues written about in the book. While it does not necessarily look great, I think Hank Green would be proud that I tried, and he would likely laugh at it (which I don’t mind, maybe he’ll make a TikTok about it). The mess of the cake can also parallel with the main character April, who’s life becomes ‘messy’ once she encounters these statues in the story. 

]]> 2021-10-15 16:35:23 UTC https://padlet.com/ocallaghant4/iu47xsmg0ohgkc1f/wish/1820036891