Electric guitar cake

Are you full of confidence and do you have heaps of music talent? Then come for an audition and you could be the next famous pop star!

Preparation time: 3 hours, plus cooling time
Baking time: 1 hour
Oven temperature: 180 ̊C

• 1¹/₂ quantities basic vanilla cake batter
• 1¹/₂ quantities basic butter icing
• guitar template
• green, yellow and black food colouring
• liquorice braids
• liquorice twist
• sweets to decorate
• edible glitter

Basic vanilla cake
Makes: 25cm round cake
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Baking time: 45-60 minutes
Oven temperature: 180°C

• 240g (260ml) butter or baking margarine
• 320g (370ml) castor sugar
• 15ml vanilla essence
• 4 large eggs
• 480g (880ml) cake flour
• 20ml baking powder
• 250ml milk

Butter icing
Makes: 1 batch
• 245ml (225g) butter or margarine, softened
• 885ml (460g) icing sugar, sifted
• 50-60ml milk

Beat the butter until soft. Beat in the icing and milk a little at a time, until the mixture forms a smooth and spreadable consistency.

1 Beat the butter until light. Add the castor sugar, a little at a time, and beat well. Add the vanilla essence and then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

2 Sift the flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt together. Fold into the butter mixture alternately with the milk.

3 Spoon the mixture into a greased and lined 25cm round baking tin. Bake in a preheated oven for 45 to 60 minutes, until cooked through and the skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then remove and cool completely on a baking rack.

 The cake
1 Bake the cake in a large roasting pan. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. Trim the top of the cake so it is level.

2 Enlarge the template to fit onto the cake. Turn the cake over so the cut surface is facing down. Cut around the outside of the templates with a small serrated knife. Brush away the excess crumbs and secure the pieces together with a few toothpicks. Make sure that they are aligned properly on the cake board.

3 Colour half the icing with green and yellow food colouring to make an electric green colour. Ice the body of the guitar, leaving part of the centre un-iced to be filled in later. Carefully ice the corners just onto the neck. Take your time as this can be rather tricky.

4 Colour some of the icing with a little black food colouring to make grey and ice the neck of the guitar.

5 Use the remaining white icing to ice the inside part of the body and the headstock. Ice over the edge of the green icing.

6 Ice the bridge (the square on the body of the guitar) in grey icing.

7 Make a small piping bag out of greaseproof paper and fill it with white icing. Pipe stripes and a few dots along the neck to form the frets. Slice thin pieces off the liquorice twist and stick onto the centre part of the body in three rows to form the pickups. Tear the liquorice braids into strings and cut according to size from the middle of the bridge up to the head. You can attach two pieces by heating one end and simply sticking two together. Lay the strings over the neck, aligning them with the pickups. Stick sweets in the side of the headstock where the strings end for tuning pegs. Stick four sweets over the bottom ends of the strings and stick two or three round sweets on the body to form the volume and tone controls.

8 Pipe a border around the cake board with a fluted piping nozzle in the remaining green icing and use the remaining white icing in the small piping bag to write the birthday boy’s or girl’s name in an autograph style. Sprinkle edible glitter over the name and cake board.