Coolest Les Paul Guitar Cake

I knew that I wanted to make a cake for my husband’s 30th birthday, and I finally decided upon one of his favorite things, which was his Les Paul electric guitar.

I set the guitar out so that I could do the quick outline sketch of the shape I needed for the cake. After I cut out my paper sketch, I used it to carve the carrot cake I made for the inside of the guitar. (I needed to cut the stem off from the body of the guitar so that the whole thing would fit within my baking sheet). I stacked two sheets of carrot cake with typical cream cheese frosting in-between.

After I iced the (guitar shaped) carrot cake with the traditional cream cheese frosting, I covered the cake with fondant. For the cake details I used mostly fondant, except for the strings, which I made with licorice strings. Since I find black fondant particularly difficult to create, I bought a pack of Wilton’s multicultural fondants from JoAnne’s Fabric’s.

I used brown food coloring to create the wood paneling and solid wood color on the body of the guitar. I bought Wilton’s food painting brushes in order to paint the coloring onto the cake.

Unfortunately, my husband ended up coming home early on his birthday, so I wasn’t able to finish the cake exactly the way I wanted. However, if I had more time, I would have definitely cut out a long thin strip of additional brown fondant so that the orange base wasn’t as evident.

Below I have included the recipe for the carrot cake as well as the cream cheese frosting:

Carrot Cake

1½ cups vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2½ cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

3 cups grated carrots

Beat the veg. oil and the sugar together using a hand or stand mixer. Beat the eggs well before adding them to the mixture. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, soda, cinnamon, and salt. Then add it to the liquid mixture. Finally, fold in the grated carrots.

Cream Cheese Frosting

4 tblsp. Butter

4 oz. cream cheese

2 cups powdered sugar

1½ tsp. vanilla

Cream together the butter and cream cheese before adding the sugar and vanilla.