I was slightly panicked when asked to make this guitar cake, as although I’ve been making cakes for two years now, a life size electric guitar seemed slightly challenging to say the least!
I started by measuring a life size guitar and making a stencil with a very long piece of greaseproof paper. I then had a piece of MDF cut to the right size and covered it in cake board foil, using wood glue. When this had dried, I covered it with sugar paste which I rolled directly onto the board, then dusted it with different shades of sugarcraft dusts (browns and golds), using a large blusher brush.
The next step was to figure out what size cake tins to use. I settled with using two 12″ squares which meant using 40 eggs, nearly 2kg dark chocolate, a bag of sugar, over 1kg flour, 1kg butter and even more icing sugar.
I stuck the two squares together for the main part of the guitar then used the off cuts for the neck. After cutting out the guitar with the stencil, I sandwiched it together with chocolate butter cream, then covered with sugarpaste (fondant icing). This was then painted with black and brown food colouring to create the desired effect.
For the plate (not sure of the technical term for this) the dials, and nobs etc,I used pastillage. I also managed to find a food colouring pen for the writing and fine details. Finally for the strings I found cotton to be the most effective medium to use, as piped strings seemed to break each time the cake was moved.
To finish off the board, I used a ribbon to go around the edge and hand painted the lettering and musical notes. Overall I was really pleased with the end result, however after spending about 25 hours on this cake, I was relieved to have it picked up!
I made a guitar cake for my grandson’s 16th birthday and I know how difficult it was for me. You did a great job, it almost looks real.
Wow! It looks so real!