Bake With Me: Gingerbread Mystery Shack for the Gravity Falls finale! (FINAL)

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WHOOOOOOOOOOOO! GUESS WHO FINISHED HER MYSTERY SHACK? THIS  GAL!

Well, finished is relative. If its one thing I’ve learned doing this project, it’s that the Mystery Shack is an absurdly detailed building. I could probably keep adding stuff for another week, but at some point I need to decide enough is enough. This is in large part I maaaay not have carved out as much time for this project as I should have. Sleep was sacrificed. I missed a meal or two. Overall, I feel vaguely like Mabel after 3 packs of smile dip.

Alright, so time to sum up what I did today. This part was all about details, details and more details. When last we left off, I’d just added icing moss to the shack.

The next thing I needed to do to make the basic building components complete was to add the brick lining to the bottom of the building and glue on the tin roofing I made yesterday. I also got impatient and made the tiny sofa before even finising the building, simply because I really love tiny furniture. Priorities.

After that it was all finishing touches. Boy, were there a lot of finishing touches. The biggest one was covering the board. I did so in a couple of stages. First, I brushed part of the board with corn syrup and covered it in an edible dirt mix I made. This consisted of brown sugar, cornstarch and cocoa powder. Mixing different things gave it a nice varied texture, since real dirt isn’t one color and one size. I also dropped in a few drops of liquid food coloring to encourage some larger clumps to form and give the appearance of rocks.

Second, I did the grass. I brushed things with a base layer of green royal icing before adding patches of grass with a grass tip. I did rough the base layer up a bit with a brush to make it less glossy and smooth, as well.

After that, it was all about signs and knick-knacks. The first and most important: the Mystery Shack door. I made fondant tree stumps and piped chocolate letters for the entrance. I also cut Bill’s silhouette (the “A”) out of the same chocolate. I ate a lot of chocolate scraps to make up for the missed meal. That counts, right?

Next: fondant vending machine, cooler, alarm sign and other bits and bobs. So much tiny painting!

Finally, I did all the wooden signage strewn across the property using gingerbread. Oh, and I piped the most stupidly delicate chocolate for the compass directions at the base of the question mark sign.

As the very last touch, I made sure to add some depth with food color dusts. A little yellow on the moss, and cocoa powder basically everywhere else. And that’s that! Mystery Shack complete.

Thank you so much for reading along with me throughout this project! I hope you all enjoy the finale tonight… we certainly can’t wait to see how it ends.

12 comments

  4. Hannah says:

    Wow this is so beautiful!!! You did an extremely amazing job! I have to make a Mystery Falls cake soon and I had no idea where to start. Luckily your tutorial helps. What dimensions did you make each of the gingerbread pieces?

    Reply

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