This Woman Makes Tiny Fake Food And It's Incredibly Cute

Oddly mesmerizing.

Here is some very tiny cheesecake.

Carissa Rho

(And a coin, so you can tell how small it is.)

The artist behind these pieces is Carissa Rho. She's a 25-year-old freelance writer from the Bahamas.

Carissa Rho

After getting her degree in journalism from Columbia College in Chicago, Rho moved home to the Bahamas, and while she was applying to writing jobs, she started molding miniature food out of clay.

Carissa Rho

You know, as one does.

Here's a ruler for scale.

Carissa Rho

She makes all the plates and utensils as well.

Rho got interested in mini food one day when she went down a YouTube rabbit hole.

youtube.com

She watched a bunch of these amazing videos from Japan that show how to make teeny, tiny edible foods.

Rho had some clay lying around the house, so she decided to try molding her own mini foods with that. She started with sandwiches and breads.

Carissa Rho

"It became a fascination for me," Rho told BuzzFeed Life. "I just kept going: croissants, biscuits, doughnuts..."

Rho says that getting the color right is the hardest part. She uses chalk pastels or mixes colored clay together until it's exactly the right shade.

Carissa Rho

To create textures, she uses bunched-up aluminum foil, a toothbrush, and a needle. To get the nooks and crannies on this waffle, she made a stamp out of an old credit card. "Food is really about getting the correct color and texture," she said.

She finishes her pieces in her toaster oven—about 20 minutes at 275 degrees.

Carissa Rho

"It makes me feel very relaxed, very calm," she said.

She loves making Japanese food in particular.

Carissa Rho

But her favorite pieces are Bahamian food. "It's the food I relate to, the food I eat all the time."

Carissa Rho

Like sheep tongue souse (soup) with Johnny cake...

Carissa Rho

...cracked conch burger, conch fritters, and coconut tart.

And while Rho is still looking for a journalism job, she's going to start selling her adorable mini food this year. (Like this teeny gyro and fries.)

Carissa Rho

"Things happen for a reason," she said. "If I were not waiting to hear back from a job, I would never have had the time to figure this out."

You can find Rho and her tiny food on Instagram or Facebook.