Fancy making a guitar cake with a cute guitar topper?

Here is a one such cake idea for birthdays. The guitar topper was made in fondant (click here for the step by step tutorial on how to make the guitar topper). The entire music themed cake was in black and white, with special emphasis on musical notes.

A black and white 2 tier cake with guitar topper and black music note topper — Guitar Cake Design with Upright Guitar Cake Topper

This was not a very difficult cake to decorate. If you read below as well as my tutorial on the guitar cake topper here, you will see that it is pretty straightforward to decorate. All the musical notes on the cake (except for the 3D one on the cake top) and the cake board were drawn by hand using a black edible marker. The black swirls on the front of the bottom tier were made using fondant. However, I used a paper template as a guide in forming those. So that made it easy to get them all consistent.

Lets look at full details on how to make this guitar cake below.

How to Make a Guitar Cake

Cake and Frosting:

Cake - this was a 2 tier cake made using my butter pound cake recipe. The top tier measured 6 inches in diameter and the bottom tier was a 9 inches round cake. Each tier measured approximately 6 inches high.
Buttercream - I used buttercream to fill the cake layers as well as to crumb coat them.
Fondant - The entire cake was decorated in fondant. I used Satin Ice in white and black.
CMC powder - I used CMC powder in fondant to help my 3D decorations firmer and more stable.
Shortening and fondant glue

Tools

Extruder tool - I used this for the black swirls on the cake as well as all the border work.
Guitar template - This was a hand-drawn template. I used it to cut my guitar topper.
Musical note template - This was also a hand-drawn template. I used it to cut out the black 3D musical note on the cake.
Swirls template - The black swirls on the front of the second cake tier were guided by a hand-drawn template.
Parchment paper
Sugar craft knife
Alphabet cutters - I used 2 different cutters, one for the 3D name on the guitar cake and the other for the 'Happy Birthday' wordings.
Plaque cutter
Lollipop stick
Styrofoam dummy

The templates for the fondant guitar cake

There were a total of 3 templates required to make this guitar birthday cake. One for the guitar topper, one for the musical note topper, and one for the swirls pattern on the front of the bottom tier.
I did a Google search for the images and then resized and modified them to suit my liking. And then I traced them onto parchment paper. For the guitar and the musical note, I cut them out following their outlines. These were to be used as paper templates to cut out in fondant.

The handmade musical note and guitar cake topper

I have a full tutorial on how I made the guitar topper for this guitar cake, so you can check it out there.

Cutting fondant musical note on black fondant

As for the musical note, I used my paper template to cut it out in black. I added CMC powder to the fondant so that my note would dry hard and firm. I rolled it to a thickness of about 1cm before cutting it out using my paper template as a guide.
And then I attached a toothpick to the bottom and let it firm up in a horizontal position.

The 3D alphabets

Next where the 3D letters for the birthday name, LENNY. I cut the letters out in the same black fondant that has been added CMC. And I let the letters firm up in a horizontal position until they too were ready to be put onto the guitar cake.

The swirls design on the guitar cake

A poster of 6 images showing how to make fondant swirls

To make the fondant swirls, I glued my paper template onto the sides of a 9 inches round cake dummy. The dummy has to be of the same diameter as the cake you intend to put the swirls on. And then I placed a layer of parchment paper on it. Since the parchment paper is see-through, I did not have to redraw the pattern on the parchment paper.
And then I applied shortening all over the parchment paper where the pattern was.
And then I filled my extruder tool with black fondant and fit it with a medium circle disc.
To create the swirls, I piped out short strips of black. I arranged them onto my prepared template, using the drawing as a guide to place the strips.
I used my sugarcraft knife to cut the strips.
Where there were joints, I used fondant glue to secure them in place.

Once the entire swirls pattern was done, I left it to firm up on the dummy.

Black fondant swirl pattern on a paper template

Assembling the guitar cake

Once the cakes were baked and completely cooled down, leveled and sandwiched them with buttercream before covering them with fondant. And then I stacked them using bubble tea straws and set aside.

The 'Happy Birthday' wording

A poster of 6 images showing how to attached fondant letters to cake

The first deco to go on the guitar cake was the 'Happy Birthday' words. I cut the letters in black using my letter cutters. And I attached them to a piece of white rolled fondant. The idea was to put the letters onto a fondant plaque and attach the plaque to the cake. To make sure I had the lettering perfectly centered on my fondant plaque, I arranged and attached the letters for 'Happy' on the rolled white fondant with shortening. And then I measured the length to determine the mid point.
Next, I arranged the letters for 'Birthday' on my workspace and measured the midpoint. The mid point was the letter 'h'.
I then placed the letter 'h' from the word 'birthday' directly below the mid point in the word 'happy'.
Determining and aligning the mid point for both words helped me to arrange the rest of the letters such that both words are perfectly centered on the guitar cake. All the letters were secured to the white fondant piece with shortening. And then, I used my plaque cutter to cut the birthday plaque out.
I applied some shortening to the back of the plaque and carefully attached it to the cake. And then I piped a long strip of black using the same circle disc I used for the swirls patterns. This, I attached it around the plaque with shortening as a border.
I also used the same black strip to add border for the top tier of the guitar cake.

The birthday name

Next I added the birthday persons name on the guitar cake. To make sure the name is in a consistently centered position as the 'Happy Birthday' wordings, I measured the name in full to determine its mid point, which was the letter N. I placed it on the cake, consistent with the mid points of the 'Happy Birthday' wordings that are already on the cake.
And then I added the remaining letters to complete the name. I used glue to make sure the letters stay firmly in place.

Attaching the swirls to the cake

A poster of 6 images showing how to decorate a music themed black and white cake

Next to go onto the guitar cake was the swirl pattern. I applied shortening onto the cake where I wanted to place the pattern, and carefully, lifted the piped pieces one by one from the styrofoam dummy, and arranged them onto the cake. Since I used shortening as the glue, it was easy to adjust the strips until I got their position perfect.
I started with the bottom of the pattern and slowly worked my way up until it was complete. And this was how the cake looked with the swirls on.
After that, I added the border for the bottom tier, which was similar to the top tier earlier.
Next were the musical notes. Like I mentioned earlier, these were hand-drawn directly onto the cake with a black edible marker and I did it freehand, making sure the notes were well spaced out.
I drew these notes on the top tier and cake board, leaving the bottom tier free of any deco except the black swirls pattern.
And finally, I added the guitar cake topper and the musical note topper.

This was how my completed guitar cake looked like:

Like this guitar cake decorating idea? Here are my other posts you might want to check out:

Recipe & Decorating Tutorial

Here is the full printable version of my guitar cake recipe and decorating tutorial.

📖Recipe

Hope you enjoyed this guitar cake tutorial.

Happy decorating 🙂

Guitar Cake Design - How to Make