Not since Marie Antoinette uttered, “Let them eat cake!” (not!) have cake and politics been so closely related. Zilly Rosen, a cake maker and artist living in Buffalo, New York created a 1,240-pixel, er, cupcake portrait of Barack Obama to express her excitement and gratitude for the presidential election process. Interviewed by Cupcakes Take the Cake bloggers, Zilly explained the source of her genius idea:

“I knew I wanted to do something to be part of this moment in history. I wanted to send up my creative energy to the “ether” in the days preceding the election. I’m a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, and they always have a bake sale on Election Day for the people voting at their polls. I first thought about making this installation for their bake sale, but then realized I couldn’t have an image of Barack within 100 feet of the polling place!”

However, she could celebrate Barack Obama and feed weary Obama volunteers on election day, if she delivered her cupcakes to the local Obama campaign headquarters. Working in Photoshop, Zilly broke Obama’s portrait into pixels of color she could then recreate in the form of “Italian meringue buttercream and handmade fondant.” Think of the buttercream icing colors as so many Pantone inks. The cupcakes were baked, iced and taken to local designer Shasti O’Leary Soudant‘s studio to be assembled and documented. Friends Mo McKenna and Alex Davies helped with the project.

Zilly and her friends then broke Obama’s image apart and delivered the cupcakes to volunteers for the Obama campaign. Says Zilly:

“…the metaphor is pretty obvious: you can’t see the image unless you have many, many individual cupcakes that all come together in one place. It took planning, organization, inspiration, and perspiration. All of these things characterized Barack’s unbelievable campaign. And the image isn’t vibrant unless it contains a wide range of values! Finally, when I was trying to decide about flavors, I went with vanilla on vanilla for the background, to comment on the playing field Barack has been competing on. The cupcakes that comprise his image? All chocolate with vanilla icing, of course!” —Cupcakes Take The Cake

It should be noted that volunteers could not eat cake until the local media took its piece. Even cupcake-eating is a mediated practice these days.