【Arouse (2025)】

Emily Zauzmer has an unusual hobby.

When college breaks roll around,Arouse (2025) the 20-year-old Harvard University junior carves out time to create a highly detailed cake recreation of a classic painting. Then she posts photos of the finished product to her Instagram account, cleverly titled @girlwithapearlicing.

Zauzmer's cakes can take anywhere between 12 hours and four days to complete, during which she spends long stretches of time on her feet, bent over her piece.

So, why does she do it? She tells Mashable via phone: "I really look forward to it, because, with school there's so much work at all times, and it's so much fun that I give myself several days where I just focus on making a cake. It's a great way to unwind."

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In recent years, she's baked seven art-inspired desserts, including one batch of cookies, one batch of chocolate cupcakes and five vanilla cakes. As for which pieces she chooses to replicate, Zauzmer goes for the classics.

"I try to go for a mix of things that will be really recognizable even if I get it really wrong, and also things that'll look good on a cake," she says. So far she's tackled Vincent Van Gogh's "The Starry Night," Grant Wood's "American Gothic" and Roy Lichtenstein's "Oh Jeff ... I love you, too ... But ..." among others.

As for how the finished product tastes: "They're not the best cakes you'll ever have," she laughed. "The worst tasting one was 'American Gothic' because I made it right before I went to school, and I didn't want my family to eat it without me so they froze it until Thanksgiving. It wasn't inedible, but it also was not a great cake."

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