Guitar Cake
Here is a a simple guitar cake decorated with fondant. This DIY music themed cake comes with a 3D guitar topper and is perfect for birthdays!
Prep Time45 minutes mins
Cook Time55 minutes mins
Decorating time3 hours hrs
Total Time4 hours hrs 40 minutes mins
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Servings: 1 2 tier cake (6 inches and 9 inches round cakes)
Calories: 16206kcal
Extruder tool
Guitar template
Musical note template
Swirls template
Parchment paper
Sugar craft knife
Alphabet cutters
Plaque cutter
Lollipop stick
Styrofoam dummy
Cake 1 (6 inches round)
- 420 g self-raising flour
- 420 g granulated sugar
- 420 g butter
- 7 eggs
- 105 ml milk
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- ⅔ teaspoon salt
- 1 ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Cake 2 (9 inches round)
- 600 g butter
- 600 g granulated sugar
- 600 g self-raising flour
- 10 eggs
- 150 ml milk
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ⅔ teaspoon vanilla extract
Baking the cakes (you may need to bake the cakes in 2 batch due to the volume).
Preheat oven to 170 °Celsius.
Beat butter and sugar till soft and creamy for about 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in the sifted ingredients into the creamed mixture alternately with milk, starting and ending with flour.
Finally, add in vanilla extract and combine well. Pour batter into well greased and floured cake pans and bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed. The cakes are done when a skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out without any wet batter.
Remove cakes from oven and let them cool completely before icing and decorating.
The templates
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.
Draw the patterns by hand or trace them from a book or download from the internet. Resize the images to fit the cake size.
Trace the patterns onto parchment paper. For the guitar and musical note, cut them following their outlines. These are to be used as paper templates to cut the fondant.
The musical note topper and guitar cake topper
As for the musical note, mix some CMC powder into black fondant. Roll it thick (about 1 cm) and use the paper template to cut it out with a sugar craft knife.
Dip a toothpick in fondant glue and attach it to the bottom. Let it firm up in a horizontal position.
The 3D birthday name alphabets
The swirls pattern on the guitar cake
To make the fondant swirls, glue the swirls pattern paper template onto the sides of a 9 inches round cake dummy. The dummy has to be of the same diameter as your cake. Next, place a layer of parchment paper on it. Secure the sides with tape so that it does not move.
Apply shortening all over the parchment paper where the pattern can be seen through.
Fill the extruder tool with black fondant and fit it with a medium circle disc. Pipe out short strips of black fondant and arrange them onto the parchment paper, using the template underneath as a guide. Use the sugar craft knife to cut the strips as required.
For the joints, use fondant glue to secure them in place. Once the entire swirls pattern is done, leave it to firm up on the dummy.
Assembling the guitar cake
The 'Happy Birthday' wording
Cut the letters in black using the letter cutters. Attach the word 'Happy' to a piece of thinly rolled white fondant. The idea was to put the letters onto a fondant plaque and attach the plaque to the cake. To make sure the lettering is perfectly centered on the fondant plaque, measure the mid points of both words. Start with the word Happy that is already attached to the white fondant. Measure the full length of the word to determine its mid point.
Next, arrange the letters for ‘Birthday’ on your workspace and measure the midpoint. The mid point for mine was the letter ‘h’. Placed the letter ‘h’ from the word ‘birthday’ directly below the mid point for the word ‘happy’.
Determining and aligning the mid point for both words will help in arrange the rest of the letters such that both words are perfectly centered. Secure all letters to the white fondant piece with shortening. And then, use the plaque cutter to cut the birthday plaque out.
Apply shortening to the back of the plaque and carefully attache it to the cake. And then pipe a long black strip using the same circle disc used for the swirls pattern. Attach it around the plaque as a border, with shortening. Do the same for the border of the first cake tier.
The birthday name
To make sure the name is in a consistently centered position as the ‘Happy Birthday’ wordings, measure the name in full to determine its mid point. Mine was letter N. Placed it on the cake, consistent with the mid points of the ‘Happy Birthday’ wordings that are already on the cake.
And then add the remaining letters to complete the name. Use glue to make sure the letters stay firmly in place.
Attaching the swirls to the cake
Apply shortening onto the bottom tier cake where you want to place the pattern, and carefully, lift the piped pieces one by one from the styrofoam dummy, and arrange them onto the cake.
After that, add the border for the bottom tier, similar to the top tier earlier.
The musical notes
Draw the musical notes randomly on the first tier cake with a black edible marker. Make sure the notes are 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.
Finally, insert the guitar cake topper and the musical note topper to complete the cake.
Calories: 16206kcal | Carbohydrates: 1781.5g | Protein: 232.8g | Fat: 923.7g | Saturated Fat: 554.6g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 53.2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 245.3g | Trans Fat: 33.7g | Cholesterol: 5001.1mg | Sodium: 12047.3mg | Potassium: 2673.5mg | Fiber: 24.5g | Sugar: 1038.8g | Vitamin A: 29962.5IU | Calcium: 1588.1mg | Iron: 24mg