Keisuke Inagaki, who describes himself as the “otaku chef” of La Ricetta Restaurant in Zama, Japan, has combined his two biggest passions – cooking and anime – to create his own style of pancake art.

The 51-year-old Japanese chef started making cute pancakes in 2011, as a way of lifting the spirits of kids in his home city of Fukushima, after it was devastated by a tsunami. He had volunteered for a program to take care of young children in a safe area after the nuclear disaster, and was looking for ways to get their attention. He had seen the pancake art of Nathan Shields on the internet, so he decided to give it a try himself, to impress the kids. That was only his starting point in the world of pancake art, though, as today Inagaki as on a whole other level.

Read More »

Cookies come in all shapes and sizes, but few look as exquisite as those of Costa Rican confectioner Lorena Rodriguez, founder of Lorena’s Sweets.

Looking at the edible works of art created by Lorena Rodriguez, once doesn’t know if to eat them or hang them up on a wall somewhere, for everyone to see. Some of the experienced confectioner’s cookies certainly don’t look like the variety you find in most cookie jars, that’s for sure. They range from realistic-looking paintings with elaborate, gilded frames, designs inspired by rococo architecture, and edible Christmas decorations. They consist of a Danish-style cookie expertly decorated with a high-quality fondant molded into shape using silicone molds.

Read More »

Liz Joy-Murray, an ex-Hollywood art director turned food artist creates sugary masterpieces that look way too good to eat.

Looking at Liz Joy-Murray’ intricate pies, it’s hard to believe that she has only been creating food art for only three years. It all started when she had to take a break from her Hollywood career for health-related reasons. She had to fill her time somehow, and baking just stood out to her, only, being an artist at heart, Liz didn’t just settle for baking delicious treats, she decided to use her baked goods as canvases for her creative and vividly colored designs.

Read More »

Luciana Gonzalez is a Brazilian confectionery master specializing in ultra-realistic sugar flowers. Her works is so incredibly detailed and delicate that you would never guess she has only three years of experience.

Up until 2017, Luciana Gonzalez had never baked a cake in her life and had never enjoyed spending time in the kitchen. But three years ago the civil engineer decided to abandon her lucrative career in civil construction due to unbearable stress, and try supporting her family in another way. After her former profession put her in the hospital, she decided to go to school again and learn another profession. The Senac Campos do Jordão school of gastronomy was right in front of her house, so she decided to give it a try, despite her total lack of cooking experience.

Read More »

Eddie Lebeau & Richard Amon, the two halves of London-based food art studio Tattooed Bakers pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in the world of cake art, with their functional carousel cakes being by far the most impressive.

From marine cakes that exotic destinations almost to perfection, to sweet architectural wonders and doll-like edible creations, we’ve featured our share of stunning cake art here on Oddity Central, but we haven’t seen anything quite like Tattooed Bakers’ carousel cakes. Not only are these treats incredibly beautiful, featuring rococo and baroque-inspired decorations, but they actually incorporate mechanisms that make the merry-go-round turn, for an added visual effect.

Read More »

Moscow-based confectioner Dilya Kabilova specializes in edible mastic figurines that look more like exquisite porcelain dolls.

Kabilova, who operates her own cake making business, uses mastic figurines as the main decorative elements for her cakes, which makes sense considering how incredible they look. Her “Disney Princess” series, which featured figurines inspired by heroines like Rapunzel, Jasmine or Elsa, was a big hit with fans and catapulted to stardom on Instagram, where she currently has over 117,000 followers. Talk about “too good-looking to eat”…

Read More »

A talented Japanese food artist uses popular spreads like fruit jams, peanut butter and Nutella to create intricate artworks on slices of white bread.

Drawing inspiration mainly from popular anime like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away or Dragon Ball, Japanese artist KU (@ken.tuchy) creates stunningly intricate and edible illustrations with breakfast classics like jam, peanut butter and cocoa spread. He is somehow able to keep all the different fruit jams and the other spreads from mixing, as well as the bread slices from becoming too soggy to work with, and the end result is always nothing short of breathtaking.

Read More »

It’s safe to say that Toronto-based artist Bashir Sultani isn’t the superstitious type, as he has no problem spilling the salt to create some of the most amazing temporary artworks we’ve ever seen.

Afghan-born Sultani originally rose to internet fame about nine years ago, when photos and videos of his early celebrity salt portraits went viral online. They’re still impressive after all these years, but the talented artist has come a long way since, taking his salt art to a whole new level with a life-like food portrait series. Instead of sticking to pure salt on a black canvas, Bashir Sultani now uses colored salt as well to create convincing representation of various foods solely by sprinkling it on a dark plate.

Read More »

When it comes to artistic pumpkin carving, Bulgarian food artist Angel Boraliev is a cut above the rest. From fine details like feathers to intricate motifs, there is nothing he can’t carve out of a pumpkin.

Boraliev, who works in the hotel and restaurant industry showcases his amazing sculptures at various events, but he has also been featured by several online outlets, and has a decent following on social media. He started pumpkin carving almost 7 years ago, and has apparently honed his skills to the point where he can carve realistic birds, feathers and everything, out of one or several pumpkins. Boraliev also carves watermelons and bars of soap, but it’s his pumpkin sculptures that really take people’s breath away.

Read More »

An amateur confectioner from Vietnam has been getting a lot of attention for her stunningly-realistic tangerine-shaped steamed buns.

Le Thuy, a secondary school teacher from Ho Chi Minh city, is well known among the confectioner community of the Vietnamese capital, especially for her jelly and bean cakes. However, she recently managed to surprise her peers as well as thousands of social media users with her unique buns designed to resemble real tangerines down to the tiniest details. Her amazing creations look like fruits on the outside, but tear them apart and a soft, spongy interior is revealed.

Read More »

Judit Czinkné Poór, Judit Czinkné Poór cake-decorating shop in the Hungarian city of Ajka, is famous for her ability to turn simple gingerbread cookies into edible masterpieces.

Mézesmanna (~Honeyed manna) drew international attention back in 2016, when popular blogs like Bored Panda and This Is Colossal featured Judit Czinkné Poór’s stunning gingerbread creations. Her incredibly detailed embroidered-like treats received the most attention, and for good reason, but the talented pastry chef has since moved on to other types of decorations, from embossed animals to intricate cartoon characters.

Read More »

Ever heard of a pie too pretty to eat? Me neither, but then I discovered pastry designer Karin Pfeiff-Boschek and her intricately decorated creations, and I started to have a whole new appreciation for pies as works of art.

Anyone would be lucky to call Karin Pfeiff-Boschek their friend. That’s because the German-born pie master bakes at least three pies a week and gives most of them to her friends after taking some photographs of them and sharing them with her Instagram fans. But looking at how beautifully decorated her works are, you can understand why she cares more about the photos than the pies themselves. Some of her creations look so incredible that it would be a crime not to keep any evidence of their existence. Luckily, Instagram lets artists like Pfeiff-Boschek do just that and make a living off of it.

  Read More »

A Japanese mother-of-three who took up food art as a way to entertain her daughters struck gold on Instagram after specializing in cute fried egg artworks.

Etoni Mama is often described as a master of kyaraben (or Charaben), the Japanese art of arranging various foods as elaborate, eye-catching designs, but it was her fried egg ideas that really helped her made a name for herself on popular social networks like Instagram and Twitter. Using fried eggs as the main element of her artistic kyaraben pieces, and various other edible ingredients as accessories, the Japanese mom creates all kinds of edible renditions of popular cartoon characters, iconic scenes and cute animals.

Read More »

A Japanese mother-of-two has been getting a lot of attention on social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest for her incredibly detailed and colorful anime-themed bento boxes.

If you’re even a little familiar with Japanese culture, you probably know about “kawaii”, the people’s affinity for all things cute, and the attention to detail present in almost every aspect of daily life. Food is no exception, not even the school lunch Japanese mothers prepare for their children every day. While some just patiently arrange rice balls, sliced rolls or pickled veggies nicely in a box, others spend extra time creating an entire ensemble, complete with rice balls shaped like panda bears or sausages carved to look like octopuses. And then you have mothers like @ryiuyuda, who take the process of arranging a bento box and turn it into an art form.

Read More »

When it comes to fondant modelling, there are few food artists in the world who can even hold a candle to Zhou Yi, China’s famous “Sugar King”. His amazing sculptures are so incredibly detailed that even though they’re edible, they definitely qualify as ‘too good to eat’.

The first time we featured Sugar King on Oddity Central was in early 2018, just after he blew everyone’s minds at the International Cake Competition, where he and his team managed to win three gold medals and one bronze, with an incredible cake featuring an awe-inspiring fondant sculpture of Empress Wu Zetian, the only female ruler in China’s history, as a young woman. It was so detailed that judges could literally count her eyelashes. He was the first Chinese artist to get a gold medal, and even though he was already very popular on Chinese social media, his fame grew even more after being featured in national and international news outlets.

Read More »