We can rebuild it. We have the pastries.

The Muffin Man gave me some advice for my next attempt at confectionery construction.


Cup cakes are very hard to work with. It is much easier to work with a horizontal sheetcake or to stack small (6") rounds. Using a Panettone pan (~4" round and 3" tall) would also work. Also, using a straight up box cake is too soft and fluffy try pound cake (from scratch) or using less water to hydrate the box cake makes a more sturdy stackable cake.

Black and gray is nearly impossible try talking to your local bakers to see if they have black cocoa. It can be more pure black than many colors otherwise just keep adding colors little by little to correct the tint (if purple add green, if brown add blue) or ask if they have a true black. You can keep using canned frosting but you often need to add more powdered sugar. Or make your own 7 minute icing or royal icing both are easier and more sturdy to use than canned. Anytime you use a pourable base coat it is easier to apply to a stand up statue. Don't make buttercream unless you have a pastry bag.

If you don't have the book "The Joy of Cooking" you should buy it. Great resource for everything food, especially the most updated. They retested the formulas in 2007.

You did great for a first try especially. "Late" baking isn't rocket science but of course physics actually works more directly in rocket science. Baking is all about the bubbles.

Hope you had fun and baking is always good you can eat the wrecks.

p.s. If colors don't work try very finely ground Oreo cookies (just the cookie) but they may have stopped using black cocoa it is very very expensive.

Absolute last resort for gray - in ages past before the FDA clamped down there was "carbon black". It is just what it sounds like but the makers wouldn't say where they got the carbon (probably coal) and it was outlawed. You can make it at home, all you need is very clean wood (tooth picks) or paper add a little fire bingo carbon black. A little goes along way. If you add so much you can taste, you added too much.


The Muffin Man developed cookies for Mrs. Fields, biscotti for Nonni's, Sara Lee's line of white bread tasting wheat bread, and is currently a product developer at Starbucks. The man knows of what he speaks.