Ben Cullen, a former tattoo artist turned food artist extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention for his amazing cake illusions, which range from desserts disguised as fruits and vegetables, to treats shaped as realistic human hands. Looking at Ben Cullen’s mind-blowing cakes, you would think that he has been baking all his life, but in fact he only got into cakes five years ago, when a client he was tattooing showed him some cake decorating models she had made, which he found to be fascinating. He felt like he needed to give it a try himself, an as soon as he did, he became hooked. He had no previous experience or even the faintest interest in making cakes at the time, but as soon as he saw what other food artist were capable of, he felt like he needed to master the craft. Read More »

Chef Ben Churchill calls himself a “food illusionist” and while the title may seem a bit pompous, it’s actually quite fitting, as Churchill specializes in disguising delicious desserts as the most unappetizing things imaginable. Most chefs try their best to make desserts look as yummy as possible, but Ben Churchill does the exact opposite. He goes out of his ways to make his sweet confections look completely inedible; he does this by disguising them as ashtrays full of cigarette butts, dish washing sponges complete with detergent foam, and even rotten fruit with disgusting-looking green mold. Most people wouldn’t touch his desserts if someone paid them, but they’d be missing out, as they are actually delicious. Read More »

The Volkswagen Golf has historically been the German car maker’s best selling model, but surprisingly it’s not the company’s best selling product. That title goes to the uber popular and reportedly delicious VW sausage. VW has been producing sausages at its car plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, for nearly 50 years. The traditional wurst is such an important part of the company culture and history that it even has its own car part code,  199 398 500 A. Sausage production at VW began in 1973, and was originally supplied exclusively to company cafeterias, to feed its staff. Over time, however, Volkswagen started selling its sausages at stadiums and in German stores, and people loved them. It’s said that because the wurst was originally created for company staff, it is of the very best quality, and it has actually won several awards at national food fairs and exhibitions over the years. Read More »

Matt Nadin, a father of three from Barnsley, in the UK, wanted his 40th birthday to be special, so he celebrated it by eating a McDonald’s Big Mac menu that he had buried in his friend’s backyard a year before. Just before his 39th birthday, Nadin came up with the “McDonald’s 365” challenge, which basically involved buying a Big Mac menu – burger, fries and a milkshake – put it in a plastic container and bury it for a year in his friend Andy Thompson’s garden. He had intended to dig it out on his 40th birthday, in November of last year, as a special way of celebrating, but only found time to retrieve the container earlier this month. The food didn’t look great, and tasted even worse, but Matt stuck to his guns and got everything down despite a lot of burping and gagging. Read More »

A 45-year-old Belgian man claims that he has eaten only potato fries and a fricadelle – Dutch hot dog – for dinner every day ever since he was 13. Rudy Gybels, a resident of Schaffen in Belgium’s Flemish Brabant province, has had the same food for dinner every evening since he was a teenager. It all started when he was 13, when his mother, desperate to get him to eat more fruits and vegetables, came up with a compromise solution. Rudy would eat healthy food at lunch, and he was free to enjoy his favorite food – potato fries – for dinner. And he has been sticking to that deal ever since, eating only fries for dinner every evening for the last 32 years. Read More »

The cakes below may look perfect to satisfy your sweet tooth, but they’re actually not desserts at all. They’re made of instant noodles and topped with stuff like chicken gulai (curry stew), opor (coconut milk stew) and rendang (beef simmered in coconut and spices). The people at Tot Aw (short for totally awesome) bakery in Jakarta, Indonesia have getting a lot of attention lately and it’s all due to their unusual cakes. Instead of sweet sponge and sweet cream and toppings, they are made of Indomie noodles shaped as tiered cakes and topped with all kinds of foods, like meatballs, chicken or salted cuttlefish. The squiggly creations are apparently quite popular at weddings, birthdays and other events. Read More »

If you thought Coca Cola Vanilla was weird soft drink, the flavors developed by Shizuoka Prefecture-based company Kimura Beverage will probably blow your mind. When it comes to new and completely unexplored soft drink flavors, Kimura Beverage is considered somewhat of a pioneer in Japan. Remember, this is the same country where limited edition flavors for popular soft drinks – like sakura Pepsi or Coca Cola Apple – are pretty much the norm. What sets Kimura apart from any other drinks company is the originality of their flavors, which range from pickled plums to fish eggs and potato chips. Read More »

A group of scientists from ETH Zurich and FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland recently filed a patent for a process that makes chocolates shimmer in rainbow colors without using food coloring. The story of shimmering rainbow chocolate began on the corridors of a university building, when food scientist Patrick Rühs, materials scientist Etienne Jeoffroy and physicist Henning Galinski started chatting about chocolate during their coffee break. The main focus of their discussion is whether it would be possible to make chocolate in other colors than brown and white, and if so, how. Intrigued by the complexity of the topic, they started looking into chocolate, its properties and what makes it brown. Then they started conducting playful experiments in the kitchen of ETH University. Read More »

The ripe berries of the genipa tree, called genipapo, have long been used throughout Central and South America to make syrups and liquors, but for a few years now unripe genipapo berries have become highly sought after for their ability to turn foods blue. The coloring properties of unripe genipapo berries have been documented since the colonization of South America, when Europeans reported its use by local communities like the Tupinambás and the Pataxós as a temporary tattoo dye, but it wasn’t until 2014 that people learned about its potential to turn food blue as well. It was then that professor and biologist Valdely Kinupp published his book, Unconventional Food Plants in Brazil, where he detailed a process for extracting an edible blue pigment from genipapo berries. Natural blue pigments are very rare in the food industry, so Kinupp’s discovery caused quite a stir which eventually turned into a blue food craze. Read More »

Västerbottensost cheese is known as the “Emperor of Cheeses” in Sweden. people there love its complex taste and creamy texture so much  that they use it on everything. When they can get their hands on it that is, because authentic Västerbottensost is only produced at a small factory in the village of Burträsk. People have tried producing it somewhere else several times, but it just doesn’t turn out the same. The secret to why Västerbottensost cheese can only be produced in Burträsk has been dubbed one of Sweden’s most intriguing mysteries. Over the years, people have tried expanding production of this famous cheese in various parts of the northern country, but to no avail. They tried making it in Falkenberg, a municipality in southern Sweden, in Bollnäs, a settlement in central Sweden, and even in the city of Umeå, close to Burträsk village. but the resulting cheese just didn’t taste like the original. The same recipe and production protocol were respected to the letter, but the Västerbottensost cheese made in Burträsk always tasted better. Read More »

Just a week after Brooklyn-based startup Air Co. unveiled its carbon-negative, air-based vodka, a California start-up announced a new type of “meatless meat” made from air. Appropriately named Air Protein, the Bay Area company allegedly used technology developed by NASA, to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) into protein, the same way plants do. During the 1960’s, the U.S. space agency started looking for a way to feed astronauts on a year-long mission by relying on the one resource its crew produced in abundance – CO2. During their research, scientists discovered a class of microbes called hydrogenotrophs able to convert carbon dioxide into protein. The resulting powder could be used to create pastas and shakes, but Air Protein now wants to use it to create a meat alternative. Read More »

If you’re keen on trying the blackest coffee around, you may want to give the Matte Black Latte at Round K cafe in New Your City a Try. As the owner of the place puts it, “it’s black like my soul”. When people say they want their coffee black, they usually mean they want it with no cream or sugar, but Round K owner, Ockhyeon Byeon, wanted to give it a more literal meaning. To him, black coffee was just a dark brown, so he started thinking of ways to make the popular drink actually black. At first, he used different types of activated charcoal, which we’ve seen used in many other goth treats, like pitch black fish and chips, or jet black cheddar cheese, but then he settled on coconut ash, which not only gave the product its dark color, but a nutty flavor as well. Read More »

Artisans at London-based design studio Bompass & Parr teamed up with scientists at the Aerogelex laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, to transfer the properties of the world’s lightest solid material into an edible dessert. Aerogel was invented in 1931, by American chemist Samuel Kistler as part of a bet he made with fellow scientist Charles Learned over who could replace the water in gels with air, without causing shrinkage. With an air content of  95% – 99.8%, aerogel is recognized as the lightest solid in the world, so it made sense for designers at Bompass & Parr to try and emulate the making-of process of aerogel to create the world’s lightest dessert. Read More »

Iceland is one of the few countries in the world where McDonald’s doesn’t operate in. The fast food giant closed its last restaurant in the Northern-European country a decade ago, but the last burger they ever sold has been carefully preserved and it still looks surprisingly edible. On October 31st, 2009, Hjortur Smarason had the honor of purchasing the last McDonald’s burger sold in Iceland, just before the restaurant’s final closing time. Like many of us, he had heard rumors that McDonald’s food doesn’t decay, and preserving the last burger sold in his home country gave him an extra reason to see if the rumors were true or not. He put the burger and the small order of french fries in a plastic bag and left it untouched for three years. Read More »

Otafuku, one of the oldest oden restaurants in japan, has been heating up the same batch of broth every day since 1945, only adding more water to it as it evaporates. It may sound gross to most westerners, but it apparently makes oden stew taste amazing. Oden is a traditional Japanese stew that is simmered in broth until served. It’s enjoyed by vegetable and meat lovers alike, as it can contain all kinds of ingredients, from from eggs, tofu and vegetables to shark meat, beef, fish balls and whale tongue, but the secret to its deliciousness is the broth. Many Japanese restaurants rely on master stock – a broth that has been repeatedly reused to poach or braise meats – to give their oden a rich flavor, but none have been using the same batch for longer than Otafuku, a Tokyo based eatery that has been reheating the same oden broth since the previous batch was lost in 1945.

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