Did anyone see the amazing "portrait" of Obama and Lincoln done on Lincoln's birthday...made out of 5900 cupcakes?
Zilly Rosen, of zilly cakes has been a long-time Obama supporter. At election time in November, she designed, baked, and frosted over 1200 mini cupcakes with fondant; when assembled they made a portrait of President Obama (click on the "Obama!" link in the website above). On Election Day,
I took the installation apart and re-assembled it at the Buffalo Obama Headquarters in honor of the volunteers and the work they did on the campaign. I would have taken the cupcakes there to celebrate the volunteers whether he won or lost, by the way.
Her work started to get a lot of attention, ending up in papers and websites around the world. So how do you top that? With this:
If you click on the fabulous and funny cake wrecks site, you can see snapshots taken throughout the day as Zilly and her team assembled this cupcake extravaganza at the Smithsonian. There was a livestream video of the assembly; the comments on cake wrecks as people watched the assembly are delightful too, showing an audience riveted by something as seemingly mundane as people placing cupcakes. There are few sour pusses of course, but mostly the comments are fun.
As Zilly said of her creation "Obama's on the left. Appropriate."
(The best part - the public got to come help "de-install" the mosaic...by eating the cupcakes! The remainder were delivered to foodbanks/shelters. Reports from the deinstallation were that the cupcakes were delicious and not at all stale.)
The mosaic, as amazing as it is, was originally planned as even more complicated! Here's Zilly, from the Cake Wrecks comments:
One more thing: I wanted to do the red stripes in red velvet cake, and Obama in chocolate cake, but this was such a mathematical challenge that I ended up not throwing in another variable. For those who are interested in the way I planned it, I'll be posting that to my blog (find it via my website) next week. Math was as important as the art and baking that went into this!