Violin Cake

        This was the first cake that someone actually asked me to make, for them. EXCITING. I was asked to make a violin cake,  to feed lots of people. Seeing I had a violin upstairs, I decided to make a full size violin cake, using the real one as a template.
         It is at this point, that I'd like to make clear, that I pretty much make my cakes alone. My mum will help if asked, but I prefer to do the cake myself. I only need help when applying fondant, or doing something ridiculously difficult. (or washing up)

           So, I began with 2 victoria sponge cakes. I levelled them, using my super-neat cake leveller. (i love that thing), and then traced the real violin onto a piece of paper, then cut the cake into the right shape.

Hey, it actually looks like a violin?

          Now, actually putting fondant on this baby, was going to be a different story. I don't think I had any serious cracks in the fondant, but it did require a lot of smoothing, and there were some small surface tears in the fondant, but nothing major. I can deal with small cracks, etc. And it still looked like a violin, so everything was going well. Please keep in mind that I have a small kitchen with a rubbish light. Space & lighting issues.

the white violin of awesome

           Well, now it came to the woodgrain effect. Basically, i just got a lot (a lot) of vanilla essence, and mixed it with some brown food colouring paste. Theres the basic brown colour. This didn't give me the variation in colour I really wanted, so I ended up dipping my paintbrush directly into the colouring paste, Which worked a lot better, and actually looked (ish) like woodgrain!

i don't like it like this..

          Now, when I make a cake, I have to go out of the room, and come back to fully appreciate it. When I saw this the next day, I was not a happy bunny. The woodgrain looked all wrong (it just looked stripey :| ) and I thought I could have done a much better job. Unfortunately, I couldn't start over again, because I had a deadline (like, the next day) So, I had to press on with the fondant decorations, which were painted in the same way.

it looks like a violin again!

          This made me happy. All decorations are fondant. I don't know violin terminology, so i'll let you figure it out. Finally, as my 'client' was musical, I decided to make a fondant songsheet, with "Happy Birthday" written on it. (y'know. as in the musical note version) This is where mum comes in, as i'm useless with real music. Drummers don't 'do' real music. :)

the final product!