The Incredible Patience It Took to Make a Masterpiece Out of Sprinkles
Reddit user Barbi0za had a brilliant idea: recreate Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” using nothing but sprinkles. With a pair of tweezers and thousands of tiny candy pieces, they worked for 22 hours to build the swirls and shapes of the famous painting on top of a cherry almond cake.
Image via Reddit/Barbi0za
The finished result fooled many people in the r/Baking subreddit. At first glance, it looked like embroidery or beadwork. Even the cake’s border was designed to resemble carved wood and made the whole piece appear framed. It wasn’t until the sponge cake was sliced open that viewers realized it was edible.
Despite the precision and effort that went into it, Barbi0za always intended for the cake to be eaten. Many commenters admitted they would have struggled to cut into it, but the baker embraced the temporary nature of edible art. The idea mirrors traditions like Tibetan sand mandalas, where painstaking creations are intentionally short-lived.
The reaction online was enormous, with more than 57,000 upvotes. Some suggested preserving it with resin, while others praised the decision to enjoy it in the moment. For a brief time, the cake was art, then it became dessert, and that transience made it even more meaningful to its creator.
A Starry Connection to Science
The original painting was created in 1889 while Van Gogh was living in an asylum. It has been studied not only for its artistry but also for its scientific accuracy. A 2024 study in Physics of Fluids analyzed “The Starry Night” using Kolmogorov’s turbulence theory and found that the whirls and eddies in Van Gogh’s brushstrokes matched patterns of real turbulent flow.
Researchers discovered that the relative distances, sizes, and intensities of the swirls follow physical laws, even showing hints of Batchelor-type scalar turbulence. Van Gogh could not have known these theories, as Kolmogorov was born 13 years after his death. Yet his painting captured natural patterns with uncanny precision. He described it to his brother Theo simply as “a new study of a starry sky.”
Sure, there were inaccuracies, too. Astronomers note that when he painted it, the moon was actually three-quarters full, not the crescent he depicted. Still, his ability to convey the invisible movements of the sky makes the painting one of the most studied in the world.
Artistry Without a Sweet Tooth
Image via Canva/vcgcorbis creator1765424
What makes Barbi0za’s recreation even more interesting is that they don’t enjoy sprinkles. In Croatia, where they live, sprinkles are not a common dessert topping. Traditional sweets are more often finished with crumbled cookies or walnuts. However, sprinkles provided the texture and look needed for this project. Their uniform shapes allowed the design to resemble bead embroidery, which was exactly the effect the baker aimed for.