Cheetos commissioned artist Jason Baalman to create portraits of presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney out of their puffy orange snacks. Unveiled on October 3, the edible artworks measured 3 feet by 4 feet and numbered over 2,000 individual Cheetos.

Jason Baalman, who’s known for his portraits of celebrities created in alternative materials (ketchup, barbecue sauce, etc.), is no stranger to Cheetos. In the past he has used the popular snack to make detailed portraits of pop icons like Conan O’Brien, CeeLo Green and Rachel Ray. This time, the PepsiCo-owned company asked him to do two portraits of the presidential candidates, based on two recent Facebook profile photos. Not one to say no to a challenge, Baalman started work on the the two “big cheeses” in his Colorado Springs, Colo., studio. Painstakingly sorting over 2,000 Cheetos for each portrait, and gluing them in just the right position on a black canvas, the young artist spent around 100 hours on the project. Just like his previous cheesy portraits, the ones of Obama and Romney look good enough to eat.

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I don’t know what it is about people and chocolate rooms, but they seem to keep making them and we keep writing about them. This time a shopping mall in Kaliningrad, Russia celebrated its fifth anniversary by commissioning an artist to create a room entirely of chocolate.

The idea of building a chocolate room inside Kaliningrad Plaza belonged to Lithuanian ad agency Ad Hunters, who commissioned experienced sculptor Elena Climent to carve it out of 420 kilograms of dark, milk and white chocolate. Measuring around 20 square meters, the delicious-looking room features furniture like a chocolate sofa, table and carpet, as well as chocolate cutlery, candle holders, and flowers. 40% of the room is made of dark chocolate, another 40% is milk chocolate, and the rest is white chocolate.

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Chicago-based artist Katherine Kalnes creates delicious pancake portraits of celebrities the likes of Justin Bieber or Ryan Gosling.

There are some fans out there that would kill for the chance to sink their teeth into Justin Bieber, so to spare the popular pop star any possible injuries, 25-year-old Katherine Kalnes has created a delicious portrait of the singer from pancakes. The young food artist uses a special pancake batter that comes in a spray can, called Batter Blaster, frosting, chocolate chips, blueberries and raisins to create edible portraits of celebrities like Drive leading man Ryan Gosling, Kelly Ripa, Ellen DeGeneres or Stephen Colbert.

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Have you ever wondered what a giant Toffifee candy would look like? Well, now you don’t have to, because sweet-loving Laura Parry and her brother David have already made one, as well as several other giant versions of popular English sweets.

23-year-old Laura and her brother David, 20, spend one day each week cooped up in the kitchen creating giant calorie bombs shaped like popular English snacks. The two university students came up with the idea on a day off from their summer jobs say neither of them are culinary geniuses, but they just thought they’d give it a go. And considering so far they’ve created impressive super-sized versions of treats like the Bourbon biscuit, Cadbury Fudge, Angel Slice and Jammy Dodger, I’d say their idea was brilliant. The Toffifee looks especially tasty to me, which had to cut with a saw to get a cross-section photo.

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Now here’s something you don’t see every day – a skilled Taiwanese chef uses leftover lobster shells to create intriguing miniature motorcycles.

We’ve seen amazing miniature motorcycles made from computer parts, used wristwatches, and wood, but the ones crafted by chef Huang Mingbo are definitely something you don’t see everyday. Apparently he’s not a fan of throwing away lobster shells after preparing a delicious dinner, so he came up with an ingenious way of repurposing them. The food carving expert showcased his lobster shell motorcycles during a cooking art seminar in Fuzhou, southeast China, leaving attendants baffled.

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Okistugu Kado, a sushi bar owner from Osaka, Japan, creates detailed vegetable sculptures, inspired by movies like Star Wars.

Okitsugu, Oki to his friends, decided to combine his passion for cooking with a talent for carving and the result is nothing less than impressive. The talented chef spends countless hours carving all kinds of fruits and vegetables and putting them together with bamboo skewers and toothpicks to create popular Star-Wars characters. Why Star Wars? Well, he admits he’s always been a big fan of the franchise and he’s even part of a Japanese group that calls itself the Jedi Order.

39-year-old Oki has been carving vegetables for the last 15 years, and he has a background in ice-sculpting, as well. So far he’s created dozens of vegetable sculptures, and even though some take him over 10 hours to complete, he claims that doesn’t bother him because when he’s carving he forgets about time. Darth Vader, Yoda, R2D2 are just some of the famous Star Wars heroes he’s carved and served to his guests, over the years. If you fancy a taste of Star Wars veggies, head over to Okitsugu Kado’s Minayoshy restaurant, in Osaka. In the meantime check out more of his work here.

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They might look good enough to eat, but Jasmin Schuller’s desserts aren’t at all what they seem. The artist made them using weird ingredients like meat scraps, blood and grease.

Austrian artist and photographer Jasmin Schuller proves you don’t unnecessarily need image processing software like Photoshop to put consumer perception to the test. For her Sweat Meat series of so-called desserts, all it took was outstanding craftsmanship and attention to detail.  She used plenty of meat scraps, two liters of blood, a bucket of animals grease and five kilos of raw meat, and processed them all into mouth-watering treats. For example, that ice-cream sundae is made from various minced meats, covered in “delicious” grease cream, and topped with a cherry carved from a pig’s heart. The cherry syrup is actually blood.

Although only cannibals would find Jasmin’s Sweat Meat truly delicious, the photos she took look so delicious I bet they’d even tempt vegetarians.

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Fancy menus may be enough for most restaurant diners around the world, but not in Japan. Here, image is everything and before going in for a bite, people want to see exactly what the food they want to order looks like. That’s where Japan’s realistic plastic food displays come into play…

Japanese fake food models can be traced back to 1917, but it wasn’t until 1926 that a restaurant owner decided to use them in a glass casing, to attract more customers. His idea was a big hit and people flocked to his venue hoping to get a serving of the delicious meals displayed outside. Soon, other restaurants followed his example and fake food display making became a lucrative business. In 1932, Iwasaki Ryuzo set up up a company that made and sold fake foods to restaurants and today it’s Japan’s top plastic food manufacturer. Business is very lucrative, as estimates show it produces revenues of billions of yen every year. For an entire menu, executed to perfection, luxury restaurants will pay up to one million yen.

In the old days, fake food models were made from wax. It was melted and pored into molds made from kanten (a seaweed jelly), but today manufacturers use silicon molds in which they pour liquid plastic and heat it up until it hardens. Modern materials and techniques apparently make the food considerably more realistic.  Restaurants send fake food makers the exact item they want replicated, along with photos. Silicon is poured around and over the disk and solidifies into a mold, which is then filled with liquid plastic and cooked in an oven. Then comes the really hard part – getting the details right. Oil based paints, regular brushes, air brushes, knives and carving tools are all part of fake food artist’s arsenal, but they all keep their techniques a secret.

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So what do you do when you have plenty of time and bacon on your hands? That’s an easy one, try to recreate some of the world’s most popular paintings.

At least that’s what Instructables user CooperTwist decided to do. He used one package of turkey bacon, two packages of regular bacon, a sharp knife, and two cutting boards, one for actual cutting, and the larger one as a canvas for his bacon masterpiece. He began by cutting the bacon into long strips, according to their color and ended up with five piles of goodness: light turkey bacon, dark turkey bacon, red bacon, pink bacon, and white bacon fat.

He then printed aversion of the original Starry Night and tried to focus on the things that stand out and make it unique: the swirling cloud, the tall village church and the dark treetop in the foreground. He used whole strips for the clouds and cut smaller pieces for the details around the village.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night was also recently recreated with 8,000 bottle caps, by two students from the University of Virginia.

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If you were looking to really hand your heart out on a silver platter for Valentine’s Day, Miss Cakehead has just what you need to make it happen.

Miss Cakehead, the mastermind behind the gruesome “Eat Your Heart Out” cake shop, has teamed up with The London Dungeon to offer lovers a real treat, on valentine’s Day. You can forget about red roses and heart-shaped gifts; if you’re visiting London’s most popular scary attraction, you and your loved one will be given heart ventricle cupcakes to feast on while enjoying the Blood & Guts exhibition.If you’re into sweets and gore, this is great news. Just imagine feasting on these delicious-looking desserts and watching a butcher surgeon perform bloody surgery in graphic detail. Now that’s what I’d call a memorable experience.

So if you’re up for a hearty meal, visit The London Dungeon on February 14 for a chance to eat your heart out, literally.

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Mirco Della Vechia, one of Italy’s most talented chocolatiers, has created a series of replicas of world heritage monuments carved in white chocolate.

Demonstrating immense talent and patience, Della Vechia has taken huge blocks of chocolate and, using a series of fine carving tools, turned them into sweet models most people would love to sink their teeth into. The Chocolate World Heritage Monuments collection, currently on display at a Hong Kong shopping mall, features white chocolate models of famous landmarks, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, or Egypt’s Abu Simbel.

Apart from this incredible collection of chocolate models, Mirco Della Vechia also holds the Guinness record for the largest chocolate sculpture in the world – a 1.5-meter-tall, 2.5-meter-long and 5.37-ton-heavy replica of the Dome of Milan.

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Song Dong, one of China’s leading contemporary artist has almost completed a miniature replica of Shanghai City, made out of various sweets. Song apparently has a thing for recreating major cities out of food, as this is the seventh project in his “Eating the City” series, which includes sweet replicas of Barcelona or London. Working with a team of talented food artists, he uses wafers, biscuits, cookies and candy to create edible replicas of Shanghai’s major landmarks.

On Christmas Eve, Song Dong will show his masterpiece to the world, and invite the people to take a bite out of Shanghai, literally. Take a look at the photos below to see how the project is coming along.

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I’ve always been a big fan of cool cakes, but the one Indian chefs have just created, in Bangalore city, really takes the cake.

Showcased during the 36th Annual Cake Exhibition, the sweet replica of Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel is definitely this year’s star of the show. It’s made out of approximately five tons of sugar, and at 22 feet long and 14 feet wide, it’s about to enter the record books as the biggest cake ever made in India. A team of chefs and food artists have been working around the clock to get this perfect replica of the iconic Mumbai hotel ready in time for Christmas, as a tribute to the landmark attacked by terrorists, in 2008.

The impressive-looking cake can be admired between December 17 – 27, during the cake show, in Bangalore.

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Jim is just trying to make some cool pancakes for his daughter Allie, but he’s gotten so good at it that his pancakes can truly be considered edible masterpieces.

If you’re familiar with sites like Neatorama or Laughing Squid, you probably already know all about Jim and his fabulous looking pancakes, but to those of you who don’t know about him yet, all I can say is prepare to meet the sweetest dad, ever!

Inspired by his father, who used to make him all kinds of crazy looking pancakes shaped like the moon, or a light bulb, Jim decided to do the same for his adorable daughter, Allie. Along the way, he became such an expert on making cool pancakes that he opened his own blog, where he documents all his creations. While it started out as a way of entertaining a toddler, it was just a matter of time before Jim’s Pancakes got the recognition it deserved. Some of the web’s most popular sites have covered his art of pancake making, and someone better throw a book deal at him soon, because the man makes the most incredible pancakes I’ve ever seen.

Below you’ll find a selection of Jim’s most impressive pancakes, but you can just head over to his blog for his entire collection and some nice video tutorials. Oh, and scroll down to the bottom to see his little blond angel, Allie.

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London-based artist Carl Warner creates amazing food landscapes he refers to as foodscapes. They are totally edible, but why would anyone want to ruin such masterpieces simply to satisfy their hunger?

Inspired by the work of American landscape photographer Ansel Adams, and literary works like The Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Carl Warner began creating his own unique landscapes out of food. Whether he uses vegetables, various bakery products or meat, his incredible foodscapes look absolutely mindblowing.

While he likes to get involved in setting up the foodscapes, Carl admits he often asks for the help of model makers and food stylists to create his sets. The process usually starts with him drawing a sketch of the foodscape, then the set is created, and finally, he takes photos of it and retouches them on his Mac. It sounds simple enough, but the foodscapes are photographed in different layers, a laborious process that can take up to a few days. He also spends a lot of time staring at vegetables in the supermarket, which may sound weird, but finding the right looking veggies for a foodscape is very important to him.

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