Thanks to all who entered our Fourth Annual Edible Books Contest! Your confections look amazing, and my only regret is the sugar craving you’ve left in your wake. You can check out all the submissions for this year’s Edible Books Contest over in the “EdibleBooks2015″ tag gallery. Without further ado, I present our winners for 2015.

Grand Prize

This year’s grand prize goes to LT member W.MdO, whose assortment of sugar cookie book covers from iconic works like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch-22 wowed us all. Iced by hand entirely with royal icing, most of LT Staff agrees, these look almost too good to eat. We’d be willing, though, to save anyone else from having the destruction of such masterpieces on their conscience.

In addition to the requisite fame and glory, W.MdO will be receiving $50 worth in books, hand-picked by LT Staff! We’ll also be sending some LT swag their way: an LT t-shirt or tote bag, an LT library stamp, a CueCat barcode scanner, an LT sticker, and two lifetime gift memberships, to bestow as they see fit. Amazing work!

2nd Place

Our first runner-up award (and the accompanying prestige and prizes) goes to LT member powerfulpotentiality, for their truly magical (sorry) cake, inspired by Annie Sage’s fantasy novel, Magyk. powerfulpotentiality’s work is the spitting image of the tome itself, in cake form—crafted as a hummingbird cake (banana pineapple spice cake, for the uninitiated) with browned buttercream frosting. I’d love to know how our baker achieved the shimmer gold effect on the accents!

Second runner-up honors (and prizes) go to LT member gofergrl84, for their impressively faithful reconstruction of the eponymous cake, from Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half masterpiece, “The God of Cake”—if you haven’t read this yet, go do it, now. Complete with looming caricature of the author in the background and marshmallow animals, we can only wonder how gofergrl84 managed to contain the need for sugar long enough to photograph their work. Well done!

Thanks, everyone!

Winners, be sure to check your profile comments shortly for details on claiming your prizes.

Competition was fierce this year—while it was a small batch, the sheer quality across the board submissions really knocked our socks off. I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a special shout-out to StJohntheBaptist‘s heartfelt and detailed pop-up cake, depicting the grand opening of their church’s lending library. LT member marcottm made a beautiful, hand-painted Rice Krispie treat castle, complete with a boy and his dragon, inspired by When a Dragon Moves In. The apple pie shipwrecked on an island of marshmallows created by milibrarian was clever and sounds delicious! And—particularly as a fellow cat-owner—morningwalker‘s cat box cake (complete with scoop!) amused me to no end. You are all far better bakers than I. Thanks so much for sharing your talents with us!

Spring has finally sprung, which means it’s time for our FOURTH annual Edible Books Contest! Members cooked up a delicious batch of literary confections and concoctions last year, and we’re expecting another strong showing for 2015.

The Rules

1. Create an “edible book.” We’re defining this broadly, so entries can include dishes:

• referencing a book’s title or characters (puns are entirely welcome)
• inspired by a book’s plot
• in the shape of an actual book (or eBook, or scroll, etc.)
• takeoffs on the LibraryThing logo

2. Document your masterpiece. At right is the grand-prize winner from last year’s contest, inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You can see other submissions from last year in the EdibleBooks2014 gallery (and here’s 2013 and 2012). If your creation is super realistic, take a photo cross section of your creation as you eat it!

3. Upload the photo to your LT member gallery. Sign in, then go here and click the “Add another picture” link to add the image.

4. When adding the image, be sure to tag it “EdibleBooks2015.” Yes, those capital letters are important. This will add your image to the contest gallery, and counts as your entry. If your photo doesn’t have that tag, we won’t know that you’ve entered. You can see current entries here.

5. Tell us about your literary inspiration—and how you made it—in the “Title/description” box

DEADLINE: The contest will run for just over three weeks. Add your photos by 6pm Eastern on Sunday, April 19th.

The Prizes

From all entries in the EdibleBooks2015 gallery, LibraryThing staff will choose the following winners:

Grand Prize (1)

• $50 worth of books from Sherman’s Bookstore*
• Your choice of LT t-shirt OR tote bag
• An LT library stamp (your choice of classic, mini, or “clean” stamp)
• A CueCat
• An LT sticker
• Two lifetime gift memberships
• Great honor and prestige

Runners Up (2)

• Your choice of one LT t-shirt, tote bag, stamp, or CueCat
• Two lifetime gift memberships

As always, we will pick a few Honorable Mentions from the batch of entries. The more entries we receive, the more Honorable Mentions we can make—and all of them will get lifetime gift memberships, too.

Have fun, and good luck!

Fine Print: You can enter as many times as you like, but you can only win one prize. Your dish must be made of edible ingredients (no hats, lost-wax sculptures, performance art), and by entering the contest you certify that it is your own creation. Entries submitted to previous LibraryThing Edible Books contests will not be considered. All decisions as to winners and book prize slections will be made by LibraryThing staff, and our decisions are final. LibraryThing staff and family can enter, but can only be honored as prize-less runners-up. Any images you load stay yours, or you can release them under a copyleft license, but we get a standard “non-exclusive, perpetual” right to use them.

Questions? Comments? Post them over on Talk.

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*Surprise books will be chosen by LibraryThing staff from Portland, ME’s indie bookstore, Sherman’s! We’ll make our selections based on the winner’s library/wishlist.