3D Acoustic Guitar Groom's Cake

     We have made three musical instruments to date.  A simple acoustic guitar, a fantastic banjo, and this cake.  The bride was limited on her budget, so to cut costs/labor we didn't make any type of armature for this cake.  The neck is entirely made out of cereal treats and then "faked out" by using black fondant to represent the underside of the neck.  I like the look of it, especially since I didn't have to do a bunch of woodworking that isn't much fun to me.  The sides of the guitar are buttercream.  The top and neck are all covered in modeling chocolate.

     For the cake board, I did use a power tool and cut 1" thick Gatorboard with a rotozip tool.  Gatorboard is a lot like foamboard, but instead of paper on the outside, it's this really hard surface.  You can't cut it with a box cutter.  I used to use it all the time when I was in visual merchandising.  Look at the letters in a department store and you will see this material.   It was not my most brilliant plan :(  It was messy, bumpy, and not a good structural idea.  I was moving the cake from the cooler to the table and hit the neck cake board on the side of the table.  It was heavier than I expected and I was just trying to hurry too much.  My accident caused the neck of the cake board to break but not come off.  At this point, the cake was carved and iced smooth so moving it to another board would have turned it into a pile of crumbs.  For a solution, we cut a 1/4" piece of plywood about the size of the cake and glued it underneath to brace the original cake board.  It gave me a lot more structural integrity. 

For the strings, well my husband is a damn genius!  We were so running out of time to finish this cake and I was going to do something that would not have been so pretty.  I'll give you the short version and we can follow it up with a little tutorial.  Since the Gatorboard cake board we could stab wooden skewers into it and they would hold in tight.  Chad drilled the tiniest of holes in the skewer and tied fishing line in a knot.  Then with both of us holding it so as to not damage my fancy paint job (heaven forbid we try this before the cake is otherwise done-silly baker).  We used a tall piece of modeling chocolate at the top of the neck to hold the string up so they didn't lay flat on the neck and it held them in the proper order without wiggling around.   We then put the line through another tiny hole in a wooden skewer and hammered it into the cake and board.  The tension was good and the line didn't move.  We then put some trim pieces over the top skewer to hide the skewers. We ran out of time to figure out camouflage for the bottom skewers.  We used real guitar string on the banjo, but know that we have figured this out, it will be our go to method.  I will say that when we moved the cake the strings got looser because the flex of the very long cake board but then got tight again as soon as we laid it on the display table.  I'm lucky the saggy, traveling strings didn't mess up my paint. 

 

Lastly, my lesson of the day is to paint with colored cocoa butter onto modeling chocolate.  Chef Rubber (http://www.shopchefrubber.com/Cocoa-Butter-Painting-Kit/) has a great kit that will last for a while.  ANYTIME I use an edible marker on modeling chocolate, once the cake comes out of the fridge and has a little condensation, all the details run like Alice Coopers mascara!  Cocoa butter painting takes a little practice, which is what I'm still doing, but once it firms up, the details won't move or get smudged by anything.  I hope you take something helpful away from this because one day you may have to figure out guitar strings on a cake!

Collaborations Can Be A Blast!

I have talked before about the importance of having cake friends.  It's nice to have someone to complain to and to bounce ideas off of, but sometimes you get to collaborate on really cool projects.

Our friends Kimberly and Andrew of Couture Cakes were asked by country music super-station US 101 to do a cake for the Heartstrings for Hope concert benefiting St. Jude.  On these types of cakes there is SO much to do, and they asked us if we would like to help out.  In return, we would be their guests at the concert.

 

They know of our (OK, Chaddy's) prowess with logos and the cutting machine, so they gave us a list of words and the US 101 logo and we started rolling out modeling chocolate.  I came up with a really cool trick while working on all these millions of letters.  I used strips of parchment paper with some vegetable shortening on it an used that to adhere the paper to the FRONT of the letters.  The spacing is kept in tact.  They were easy to apply to the cake too - just apply a little tylose glue to the back of the letters and place them against the cake.  Hold your hand over the paper and the heat from your hand will release the shortening.  Easy peasy!

We ONLY did the words & logos on this cake...

So here's the cake and it turned out amazingly, don't you think?  Andrew did an absolutely perfect job sculpting each of the artists Which included Randy Houser, Tyler Farr, Kelly Lovelace, Jared Neimann, and Sheryl Crow!  We were also treated to a backstage meet and greet - getting to meet all of those talented artists was almost as much fun as helping out our friends!

Banjo Cake Armature Design

Last week I showed you guys the awesome banjo cake I made for Rachel and Daniel's wedding.  They were thrilled with the cake; I even heard from the bridal planner that they wouldn't allow the cake to be cut!  They took the whole thing home with them without a scratch on it!  That's the way I like to think all my cakes go over.  I HATE seeing pictures of my cakes after they have been fed upon!!

Anyhoo, back to the design of  banjo armature.  I wanted this cake to look as much like a banjo as possible and as little like a cake as possible.  Even though it would mean more inedible pieces, I wanted the neck to be "floating", I wanted to use real guitar strings, and I didn't want a visible cake board.

In the picture above, I have removed the neck from the armature and screwed 6 small eye screws into the bottom of the banjo.  These will hold the strings.  The bottom cake is om the armature.  I included the thickness of the cake board into my design so that the banjo would keep it's scale and since it was the same size as the cake (14"), you would never know there was a cake board.  Even though the cake actually only measures 1.25 inches thick, I decided to put in some supports because I didn't want ANY shifting or sinking.  The cake above has it's basic decoration already done, which was a block modeling chocolate top with a wood grain modeling chocolate wrap around the sides.

This is the 2nd tier of the banjo, which is a 12 " cake.  It is sitting on a very thin cardboard round.  I cut out the holes for the armature.  Once it was on the cake I had to fill in the bottom with just a smidge of modeling chocolate to fully round out the bottom.  From there, it got a similar coating as the bottom tier.  White on the top with a gray wrap around the sides.  The neck could then be attached and then the details could be added.  Here's one more shot of the completed cake, just in case you missed it last week!

Have a great week!

Banjo Groom's Cake

 

I met with Rachel and Daniel several months ago and as soon as they mentioned they were interested in a banjo cake, my eyes lit up.  This is the kind of cake that I rarely get to do, but always look forward to making.  Almost immediately, I called our good friend Jim Pankey, who is a professional banjo player.  He was kind enough to lend us a banjo for a couple of weeks.  Chaddy went to work taking measurements, making cardboard templates, and taking pictures and detailed notes.  He even made some silicone molds of the tuning pegs!

Details on a cake like this is what can take it from great to incredible, but none of it will come together without a proper structure.

In instruments I have made from cake in the past, I used extruded fondant for the strings, and I never liked the look.  This time I wanted to use real strings, which meant that extra structure would need to be in place.

Luckily, our couple didn't care a great deal about how many people the cake fed, they were much more interested in a realistic final product.  The cakes are comprised of a 14" and a 12" rounds, but each "tier" is less than 2 inches high.

The neck is made of 1/4" wood, covered in modeling chocolate.  There's a small block of wood at the top and bottom of the banjo to hold the neck and strings.

 For the neck, all the decorations needed to keep a very low profile to keep the strings from damaging them.  I used thin strips of edible image paper for the frets, and gumpaste rolled super thin for the inlay.  I looked at lots of pictures of banjo inlay, and they were ranged from very simple to very ornate.  In the end, we wound up using a standard fret dot with a heart on either side.  I thought it added a nice hint of romance (it was a wedding, after all) but without being too "girly" or over the top.

So, is anyone interested in seeing the structure used to create this cake?  If so, drop back in here next week and I'll talk a little more about how we made the structure and show a few in-process shots of the cake.  If you have any other questions about the banjo cake, leave a comment on this post and I'll try my best to answer it next week.

Saxophone Music Lover Cake

I made this groom's cake for a music lover a while back, and I was really thrilled with the way it came out!

I bought a musical note stencil a long time ago and I was so excited about using it when the client placed the order.  The stencil was pretty intricate, but it went on the cake really well.

I cut the saxophone out of modeling chocolate using some printed clip art as a guide.  Then I added some dots using my diamond impression mat.

A lot of my grooms are peanut butter lovers (my hubby included) and this groom was no different.  So we piled this cake up high with Reeses' Peanut Butter cups.  YUMMY!

Did any of you catch my interview over at CakesDecor.com?  If you didn't it would mean a lot to me if you stopped by and left a comment.

Creative Arts Guild Cake

Being an artist (at least I consider myself an artist), I try to do everything I can to support local art programs.  In our town, we have The Creative Arts Guild.  They do a wonderful job of bringing art to our community, as well as teaching classes in art, dance, photography, music, and probably a lot of other stuff I can't even remember right now.

Every year they host Festival, where artisans come from near and far to sale their particular brand of art.  This year there were SO many vendors selling everything from jewelry, to wood crafts, to tie dye T-Shirts.

The night before Festival begins, the Arts Guild hosts The Patron's Party where they invite the best food vendors in town to come in sample their wares.  We were honored to be invited again to provide cake for the event.

This year we really wanted to go all out and really make something special.  We broke out the Cricut Cake machine and cut out lots of dancers ( and the font too).  Then we went to the Guild's website and grabbed some images from local artists and printed them on edible image paper.  I framed these mini masterpieces on modeling chocolate frames (made from a lace mold).

I added the red curtains for a nice splash of color, but also to represent the theatrical and for the dramatic flair it adds.  It's just red fondant, and the pleating gods were with me that day.  They turned out SO nice!  I topped the cake with some musical notes bursting out the top.

It was very well received by the guests and especially by the Guild members.  I think we may have set the bar for future years.  If the folks from the Arts Guild are reading this, we'll try to go bigger and better next year!!