Tuesday 21 May 2013

Birthday Cake: Acoustic Guitar


When someone asks you if you can make a cake in the shape of a guitar and you say yes, what you shouldn’t do is, just 2 days before, decide your board is the wrong shape/size, not be able to get another one, then have to make a very apologetic telephone call explaining that you are going to have to do a different cake.

Rubbish.

I am still racked with guilt over this cake.

I got the biggest board I could get my hands on in the shop where I get my decorating supplies but when it came to planning how to get the cake on it, it just wasn’t big enough. It turns out that for a guitar cake you need to really long board. This board just wasn’t cutting it. I could have got a guitar on it but it wouldn’t have fed the amount of people it needed to feed and it would have looked a bit like a pea on a drum..

Still rubbish

This is how I would have liked it to look! This fantastic cake is by Peta, and you can see a tutorial here.
I spoke to the lady who was asking for the cake and she seemed to understand. For me, it was an exercise in never underestimating the need for planning. If I’d have planned (or if I’d have known I was going to need a plan) I would have ordered a longer, thinner board online.

What I ended up doing instead was crafting a guitar out of fondant icing and popping it on a cake. I think I managed to achieve something quite classic and in any other circumstance I would have been pleased with it but it still sticks in my mind that it wasn’t what she wanted.

The guitar is based on the acoustic guitar of Kelly Jones from the Stereophonics


She loved it when she came to collect it, loved it even more when I just charged her cost price for it (to ease my guilt) and told me her son was also going to love it. I really hope he did!


I’ve got a cake to do for a couple of weeks that I know is going to require some planning. I think I’ll start on it now…!

Cake: vanilla sponge filled with strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream

Vicky xx 

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