Woman Spends 20 Hours Turning Food into Disney Character Masterpieces — and the Results Are Unbelievable (Exclusive)

• Laleh Mohmedi has gone viral for her intricate food art, recreating iconic characters.

• Her creations have included characters from Venom, Inside Out, and various Disney franchises.

• She started making the art for her son before turning it into a career.

Imagine getting to play with food for a living.

That's exactly what Laleh Mohmedi gets to do as a mom-turned food artist who started making edible creations 10 years ago for her then two-and-a-half-year-old son for fun before it evolved into a full-time career.

Known as "Jacobs Food Diaries" online, the crafty chef now doubles as a content creator who's built a million-plus following on social media across Instagram and TikTok for her consumable, pop culture-inspired culinary creations that are made with 100% real food.

That fact, though, may be hard to believe when scrolling through her social media pages that are vibrantly colored with iconic characters from Disney, Nickelodeon and Sony pictures, intricately replicated to food-filled perfection.

Mohmedi gave PEOPLE an exclusive look inside her kitchen-turned-studio where she spends hours upon hours taking ordinary foods in her refrigerator and transforming them into palatable plates of beloved cartoons and famed faces that add a hint of magic to her meals.

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"They started off really simple," recalls the Melbourne-based mom when reflecting on her early food art a decade ago prior to going viral on social media within a month of sharing her work online. "I was in medical recruitment and I started doing it for my son just for a bit of fun."

A humble Mohmedi swears if you look back at the edible lion she made for her child when first taking a stab at the art, it was "the worst creation ever" and says it "didn't even look like a lion." She jokes, "It looks more like a bear, to be honest."

Over time, Mohmedi perfected the culinary craft and evolved her "simple" creations from animals to movie characters, per her son's requests. "With practice, it got better," she says. "If you look at my original ones, they're not great. They're not great... So it just came with practice."

Not only did her designs evolve, but her clients did too! Mohmedi makes clear that she doesn't create animated food plates anymore for her son (because "that would be weird," she jokes) — but rather big-named clients like the aforementioned movie studios and more.

"Recently I did one for Venom and Dream Productions, which is the spin-off from Inside Out for Pixar," she says. "Food companies and production companies will ask me to make a character or use their food to turn into a creation, and that's what I do."

With some creations that can take upwards 20-plus hours to make, Mohmedi says those clients are where "most of my income comes from," referencing the time-consuming Scar masterpiece from The Lion King that required hand placing "tens of thousands" of rice grains for the lion's face.

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While the plating process clearly takes time, the food prep process adds to it because Mohmedi makes all of her recipes from scratch. "It'll take 10 minutes for me to make all the way up until an hour and a half or two hours," she says depending on the ingredients she uses in the design.

Mashed potatoes, for example, are often used for sculpting figures and faces, though they must be cooked precisely in order for them to be perfectly pliable. "You have to get the right consistency because it's pure potato, I don't add anything else into the mashed potato," she notes.

"The plating is very quick. It's just making the recipes," the artist clarifies, though says she uses her time wisely while items cook. "While the pasta sauce is cooking, I'll cut up all the creations... so, the plating is not hard."

Mohmedi gets creative with her ingredients, which can range from quail eggs for a creation's eyeballs to white fungus that can replicate sheep-like fur. "Black fungi is something that I use that's different and that's a great thing for hair or if I'm using a black part of the character," she explains.

Meanwhile, the chef makes clear that she primarily sticks with produce that is already in her fridge and will only run to the market on a case-by-case basis. "My fridge is quite a colorful fridge," she jokes.

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"My favorite stores to go to are Asian grocers if I'm looking for weird and different shaped, colored things," she continues.

Despite the wide range of items Mohmedi incorporates into her creations, there are two ingredients she steers clear of utilizing: food dyes and fondant. To match the hues needed, she'll turn to natural dyes like tea leaves for browns, activated charcoal for blacks and purple cabbage for blues.

In fact, Mohmedi credits much of her early viral success to making "healthy foods turned into creations" when she used to cook for her toddler at the time. "When I was making green rice, I'd use cold pressed kale juice."

"I'd literally sit there and use a cold press machine and get the kale juice, and then I'd use that to dye my rice," she remembers. "That was mainly when Jacob was eating it," she adds of her son.

Despite it being her main hustle, Mohmedi views the work as a passion project for herself. "I look at it more as my escape now... When my kids are at school, it's such an escapism for me. I zone out," she says.

And guess what? After all the hours put into her playful creations and work for fun, she doesn't order takeout for dinner to give herself a break on the daily! If she isn't eating her beautifully plated masterpieces (which she often does), she's cooking a meal.

"When it comes to nighttime, I have to cook dinner. It's totally different," she says in comparison to her cartoon creations. "And I enjoy that as well."

Read the original article on People