Welcome to Friday! Today, we’re doing a pictorial tour of foods that are so beautifully crafted that they look “too good to eat.”
The inspiration came from Janet Rudolph’s blog, “Dying for Chocolate” – specifically, her recent post on the Cocoagraph Company:
Dying for Chocolate: Cocoagraph: Edible Chocolate Bars from Your Photos.
Really? Chocolate that looks like old-style Polaroid photographs? Beautiful and edible? I had to take a look.
Amazing, isn’t it? Puts those custom-printed M&Ms to shame.
So I wondered about other foods that look “too good to eat.” I was already familiar with things like watermelon-whale fruit bowls…
… oh, and those lunchbox ideas for kids. You know, the super-fussy kind, where you feel like a neglectful mother for not cutting the PBJ into star shapes, or making octopi out of hot dogs. I’ve actually tried to do that, but my attempts had mixed results: I used a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter for the PBJ that wasted a lot of bread, so I had to make two sandwiches; the hot dogs turned out to be squids, because I could only get six legs out of the suckers. No way could I do this on a regular basis, people.
Some more successful moms, making lunch:
Wowzers. Here’s another:
Even if I could successfully make a food “mural” for my kids that looked decent going into the bag, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. By lunchtime, it would look more like cubist art:
But it’s all good fun, right? Here are more fascinating edible art pieces:
Aren’t they amazing? I’m in awe of the creative talent that went into these.
But I wonder: at what point does the art take over and the appetizing element of the food itself start to decline? Would you really want to bite into a chocolate bar that has a baby picture of your child on it? And who wants to be the first to cut into that gorgeous Lego cake? (Not me. I was the kid who reluctantly bit the ears off the chocolate bunny at Easter, LOL). So what do you think? I’d love your opinion.
Have you had any encounters with edible art? Have you tried your hand at it? Drop a line in the comments section and tell us about it!
Until next time,
Kathy
I have a friend who’s an extremely talented cake designer, so she’s the kind of person who creates beautiful, edible works of art. I’d be like you and have trouble cutting into them, but she has no trouble at all eating her artwork. She has so much fun creating the cakes and cupcakes and fondant pieces that she’s happy to do it all over again.
Well, folks eating her creation does create a need for a new work of art, LOL! I’d love to be that talented. Thanks for the visit, Marcy!
Wow, those chocolate polaroid bars are rockin’! People seriously amaze me with their creativity. I’m a failed food artist. I bought my twins the bento box lunch boxes and had all these cool things bookmarked that I wanted to make for them. I didn’t take into account that I would be making this stuff at six in the morning. Or that I had twins. Or that they wouldn’t actually want to eat it. Now they take normal sandwiches and unaltered fruit and veggies in their fancy lunch boxes. Sigh…
Sorry it’s been taking me so long to get back to you guys…. Shannon, you crack me up! I know what you mean about being inspired and buying something with grand plans, and then…it’s not happening, LOL. Nothing wrong with unaltered fruit. Besides, the arrangement wouldn’t look anything like the way it started out by the time lunch rolled around!
Wow, these are amazing. Why didn’t my mother make my lunch look like that? All we got were ‘mock’ chicken sandwiches LOL!
Hmm…what are “Mock” chicken sandwiches? Maybe I don’t want to know?! Thanks for stopping by, Nancy!
So much fun. That lego cake is amazing!
I know, right? Fondant icing is an amazing medium. Wish I knew what to do with it!
I think you’ve inspired by Lego-obsessed son! LOL. My masterpieces are always a little more crooked and smeared, but they taste good.
Isn’t it funny how we’re all zeroing in on that Lego cake? Maybe we miss our childhoods, LOL. My “masterpieces” are kind of the crooked/smeared-but-tasty kind, too, Julie! Thanks!
My son would have been all over that LEGO cake. Like you, I often stand back and admire. Maybe it’s because we can appreciate the work that went into those creations. 🙂
I suppose people devouring them and oohing & ahhhing after all that hard word, would be akin to a writer receiving good reviews, after all those lonely, late nights.
Cake makers and food artists have better hours and better pay! 😉
Do they? I know very little about that profession, but it sure looks like fun! At the birthday parties, I’d think parents would be taking more pics of the cake than the kids, LOL.
It’s like a nice sushi presentation – some of them are so amazingly intricate and complex. But then I realize that I can’t really just sit there and look at the sushi while I drink Sake, so down the hatch it goes.
I don’t have much of an artistic hand with stuff like this, Kathy, so leave it to the pros.
LOL, Zack, you are too funny! Maybe a little rum with that Lego cake would help me get the knife and make the first cut. 😉