Sunday Sweets: Bookin' It
April 17, 2011 Loyal wrecky librarian Saima has informed me that this week is National Library Week. Now, when I was a kid we made weekly visits to our local library, and every week I came home with a teetering stack of books taller than I was, so libraries are near and dear to my heart. That little building was my literary nirvana - a kind of free candy shop, where the lollipops were spun poetry, and the chocolate bars were the stuff of legends, sci-fi, and fantasy.
So today, I'm dedicating these delicious book-inspired Sweets to Saima and all of her fellow librarians and library workers. Shush on, my friends. Shush on.
By LeapulaHandpainted *and* little ducklings around the edge? Awesome!
I'm in awe of this Chronicles of Narnia gem:
WOW.
This one is a map of the land of Oz:
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse by The Cake MamasSo sweet.
Another classic: Goldilocks and the Three Bears:
Submitted by Lindsay B.; baker unknown.Here's a more modern entry - and if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend The Hunger Games
By Pikko
Made by Frances C.These are all inspired by Pratchett's YA series beginning with The Wee Free Men
. The 9-year-old heroine, Tiffany Aching, is a hedge witch aided by tiny blue men called the Nac Mac Feegles, who are always spoiling for a fight and almost always drunk. (Did I mention these books are funny?)If you look closely, you'll see outlines of the Feegles on the tier below Tiffany's hat:
And they're also supporting the sheep field below:
Besides the main cake is a bottle of sheep liniment (Tiffany's family raises sheep), a block of cheese (which she's quite good at making) and two of the books she consults frequently...in the book. Heh. I love it when a baker nails the details this well! So cool.Have a Sweet to nominate? Then send it to Sunday Sweets [at] Cake Wrecks [dot] com.
Now, go visit your local library. :)
Reader Comments (85)
I think the Alice in wonderland one is my favorite. But narnia is also pretty awesome.. Happy national library week!!
Loving the Narnia and Beatrix Potter cakes! The Alice in Wonderland cupcakes are amazingly well done, too! :)
I didn't visit the library as often as you did when I was a kid, but I was quite the bookworm too. I actually got in trouble once for reading a library book in class.
That reminds me, have you ever seen any Beverly Cleary-inspired cakes? Those would be so cute (The Mouse and the Motorcycle comes to mind).
Oh so darling. I love them all :D
Amazing collection of Sunday Sweets! I love all the attention to detail from the stories :)
We are serious Pratchett fans and this artist absolutely gets it! Thanks for sharing it. The Wee Free Men look just as I imagined them!
The Mrs. Tittlemouse cake is so cute. Makes me want to be a kid again so I can have it for my bday :)
HUNGER GAMES CAKE! NIGHTSHADE BERRIES!OH, THE DETAIL!*dies*
The blue packet on the WFM cake is Jolly Sailor tobacco, which her Granny smokes and which plays a key role at several points in the books.
The audiobooks of this series are FANTASTIC - even if you've read them already, the narrator is amazing at bringing the characters to life.
Squeeeee! I want to have that Wee Free cake forever and ever!
I too used a weekly foray to the Library to borrow an oversize load of books, Legends and Myths, history, Sci-fi and Poetry, we have a lot in common I bet :)I usewd to use my Mum and Dads membership tickets so i could borrow enough books to last me a week in the holidays(juniors were limmited to 4 at a time),
and I love this weeks sweets ,FYI just finished the latest Tiffany Aching book 'I shall wear midnight' its REALLY good.
lauge= a way to count words.
The Feegles are spot on! What a fantastic piece!
I love good YA series :) The Hunger Games threesome is amazing and now you've given me another good series to read! Thank you, thank you, and oh yeah... THANK YOU!!!!
My 12 yr old daughter and I are Hunger Games fans. She more than I. She tweets out a count down text every day with the number of days until the movie comes out. She draws pictures of Peeta and Katniss. She wants a Hunger Games birthday. (hopefully a tad more civilized). Now I know she'll ask me to make this cake!
I LOVE the HUnger Games....but I did not like the last book. Anyways,I'm glad I was alone while readin this because I just yelled Ooo,oooo, The Hunger Games! Oh, and there is nightlock!!
My mother was a library and my father was a bookstore. Thanks for the nod to libraries and books! And cakes and books are a perfect match -- I think it was Sir Francis Bacon who said something like "Some books were made to be tasted...some to be eaten...some to be digested." Great cakes today -- combining food for the body, food for the soul.
wv - reelyfur: the distance between the earth and the moon.
Holy crap the Tiffany Aching cake! Unbelievable! Who is this person and how do I get them to make my birthday cake in Los Angeles?
I love the Feegles cake! I just finished the latest in that series "I Shall Wear Midnight", Crivens! We love Terry Pratchett! :-)
NAC MAC FEEGLE!
*squee*
Wonder if the cheese is Horace. Wouldn't be quite right to eat Horace...
That cake is a hat full of awesome.
Boo! No Harry Potter cake! :'(
I just finished reading Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass last week so it was fun to see those cupcakes! Also, you guys become more and more awesome to me every post. I LOVE the Tiffany Aching series. And I want to eat a Wee Free Man now. Thanks for all the delicious eye candy. Keep up the good work!
wv - ingdork: A person who only speaks in words that end with "ing."
Oh dear god I freaking LOVE the Tiffany Aching cake!!!
The Terry Pratchett cake is just amazing, so much detail! And I love how the tier below Tiffany's hat has the Wee Free Men with snowflakes for the Wintersmith book! LOOOVE it!
The Hunger Games Trilogy cake is my favorite, mostly because they are my new favorite series. (Sorry, HP. You have to share my affections.) How awesome are these cakes?!?!?!
Daft Wullie! And William the Gongagle! And Rob Anybody! Now if I could only find No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock...
Oh waily waily waily!
Great cakes all!!
love them all, but have to say that the alice in wonderland mini-cakes are a-ma-zing! thanks as always for sharing...
FANTASTIC! I want the Mrs. Tittlemouse cake for ME!
I love the Alice cupcakes, and the Wee Free Men cake is amazing. <3
I love love love love LOVE the Hunger Games cake!!! It's one of my favorite books!
Love the Nac Mac Feegle cake, though the large figures are not, I believe, edible. They appear to be the resin figures that you can purchase here: http://www.paulkidby.com/feegles/index.html
(And that website is your number one source for all things Discworld.)
Crivens, a Wee Free Men cake!
I about cacked my kecks.
My favorite books as a child:
http://cakecentral.com//gallery/38335
Oh my GOD (offler or whoever), I LOVE the Terry Pratchet cake! 'Specially since I started to think I was the only one who loved his books, none of my friends even heard of him.
But they don't have as good taste ;-)
(ok, he's not THAT big in sweden, but seriously, he's the funniest guy alive. Or dead. HE REALLY IS.)
I just wanted to let you know I was at my local library on Monday, & I was looking for another book, when I spotted your Cake Wrecks book on the shelf. It made me smile, & I said to myself "How cool is that!" Thanks for the double sweets weekend.
Thank you, thank you and thank you so much Jen and Cake Wrecks for recognizing librarians and library workers. These cakes are amazing. I love them all.
Sincerely,
Saima
LOVE the description of your childhood library experience. Mine was much the same, and part of the reason I'm a librarian myself. I would like to add the following:
"So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone."
— Roald Dahl
My coworker and friend, Saima (yes, THAT Saima), told me she was sending you an e-mail earlier this week. I have to admit that I had an "oh, that's nice" and shrugged it off.
Now I'm a squealing mess!!
Seriously, Jen, when we are tears-tired with budget cuts and increased workloads, we turn to your blog for much needed laughter. It makes us sweet again.
Thank you. Truly.
P.S. Saima, we *need* cake this week.
I love this combination of my two favorite things: Sweets and books! What gorgeous cakes -- they make me want to hone my cake skills to I can bake one devoted to Sylvia Plath. (Too esoteric?)
Jen,
Just out of curiosity, what are your top 10 favorite books of all time? I'm always looking for new authors/books to try out.
The most heartwarming for me is the Beatrix Potter one, but as an adult I am utterly in love with Terry Pratchett's books, and loved all the details of the Tiffany Aching cake.
I see someone's already mentioned the blue object is a Jolly Sailor Tobacco pouch. Note also that "Special Sheep Liniment" is actually moonshine whiskey....
The black stacks holding up the top tier look like the standing stones. However, I don't believe the cheese is Horace; isn't he a rather runny Lancre Blue?
All these cakes are a delight--thank you SO much for posting them all, and the Hobbit ones yesterday as well.
Your utter fan,
--Nonie
Eeee! I also missed a few other details on the Pratchett cake: the jelly bears on the middle tier, the cairn treasures trimming the bottom rim, and the design of the White Horse of Uffington on one of the white petit-fours in the back left. ("It ain't what a horse looks like; it's what a horse BE.")
However, I can't figure out the two gold things near the base of the snow/Mac Feegle frieze. Anyone?
(Fan cakes are cool enough even if they only do one thing - say, a good portrait of The Cat in the Hat. But I especially enjoy the complex ones with all the little details you can only find on the fourth or tenth look.)
I love the library! I too have fond memories of visiting the local library and coming home with a giant stack of books. That Terry Pratchett cake is adorable! And the Narnia cake made me go "Wow!" too. I've never read Hunger Games; that should go on my list of books to read. Thanks for the recommendation!
WV: gramoly. I like yogurt topped with gramoly for breakfast.
I have to say, I'm amused at the criticism The Hunger Games has produced, claiming it's too violent. For those who know about it, the concept of the story is a little too close to a Japanese book called Battle Royale: much more violent, and very much into the psychology.
That being said, whoever wanted to be young so they could have the Beatrix Potter cake, doesn't it say 'Happy 40th' on it?
Very cool post, but National Library Week was actually last week! :) I work at a library, so I know these things...
As other people have mentioned, I will echo that the blue "book" is actually a packet of Jolly Sailor Tobacco. I loved the Beatrix Potter cake too. I adored the stories when I was a girl. Thanks for the recommendation of The Hunger Games, I'm always on the lookout for another great YA book. If you haven't read him you should check out Charles Delint and his YA and Adult fantasy novels too.
Sara
Ah, a perfectly sweet encore to National Library Week. What a wonderful collection ... all fantasy, too. Thanks for sharing ... sweets, libraries, and books are timeless.
Crivens! These are all AMAZING!! But the Feegle cake! :O *picks up jaw from floor* Love Terry Pratchett's books! Thank you! XD
Did anyone else die of happiness when they saw the Wee Free Men cake? I've loved that series for years! Reading the 4th book right now and it's AWESOME
If you haven't seen the Wizard of Oz pop-up book by Robert Sabuda, you should go find it immediately. All the brilliance of that cake x 1000000!
http://amzn.to/gOhUl2
Yes! READ THE HUNGER GAMES!!!!It is sooo awesome! *One of* the best books ever!
The cakes are a-MAZ-ing! Love the Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz one!!
Can you do another Harry Potter Sunday Sweets post? I love seeing the books come alive!! ;) stay happy
-expelliarmus010
Ah, the English teacher approves of this post. :)