Blue acoustic guitar cake

A few months back I donated my cake baking/decorating services as a silent auction item for a fundraiser for a school. Basically I'd create any cake for the winning bidder that they wanted (within reason) for any event. Luckily for me the sweetest, coolest lady ended up bidding on my "item"-- and had me create a cake for her son's 4th birthday party.

It's actually a pretty giant cake. 

Two carved 9 x 13" cakes sitting on top of a 2ft x 3ft board.

I really didn't know what I'd be making at first, but when she told me her son wanted a "blue acoustic guitar" I was super stoked to try it out!! And so my Google hunt for an acoustic guitar cake began. I was mostly inspired by this blue acoustic guitar cake, this idea of creating a fondant top with buttercream sided cake (which is how I made this cake), and this AMAZING blog post where she gave me the idea to use real string on the cake.

I just used regular old sewing thread wrapped around fondant and viola! 

Guitar strings that were wayyyy easier to make than fondant strips, and looked super realistic.

As far as cake itself, I used my go-to yellow cake recipe from Cooks Illustrated and tried a new  European style buttercream recipe. It's called German buttercream and I think it beat out my tried and true Swiss Meringue Buttercream as my new favorite!!! I couldn't believe it myself-- but it literally tasted like a cross between buttercream and whipped cream. Plus it got less hard in the fridge, so even if the cake didn't have enough time to come to room temperature the frosting wasn't overly solid. The buttercream was so delicious I'll blog post completely dedicated to it in the next week.

Well, there's nothing really more to say about the cake itself other than to show you more pictures.

!! WARNING: MORE PHOTOS AHEAD OF MY KICK-ASS CAKE !!

If you look closely you'll see that I used blue dust to accentuate the edges of the guitar. This gives the guitar more depth and makes it seem less "flat," ultimately yielding a more realistic piece. 

You'll also notice the black hole is indented a little bit. 
Such a small detail but I felt it gave the guitar a lot more of a realistic look. 
And check out how the string literally hovers over the fondant. LOVE IT!

Another, less artsy, view of the handle. It was simply a piece of cardboard covered in
 black fondant and decorated with white fondant

A view so you can see how large the cake was. Not quite full guitar sized, 

but for a 4 year old it probably would have been perfect!

There you have it folks! Another fun kids birthday cake on the blog. I have another one that I made a few months back, but still waiting for some photos before I share them all with you.

Buen Provecho,
Jacqueline