Rock-n-rolling pin

...and yes, I'm embarrassed by my choice of title.

Lauren's 1st Fender Cake

Vanilla cake; vanilla buttercream

When I got a message from one of my favorite high school teachers asking for his daughter's 16th birthday cake, I knew it had to be awesome. What I didn't know was that I'd end up making a life-size electric guitar out of vanilla cake. This cake was so accurate that Leo Fender, himself, wouldn't have known it wasn't real. That is, of course, until he realized ours is a little harder to tune...

Some pretty nice knobs, if I say so myself

The trickiest part of this cake definitely lay in the string work. (Not string work in the culinary sense, fellow Food Network Challenge watchers - think more Rock & Roll.) Coming up with a string sceme wasn't too bad. Over-tightening them, however, was a little trickier than I thought. We also tweaked our vanilla cake recipe and it is amazing! I can't wait for the next round of family get-togethers to start showing it off.

Here are some close-ups of other aspects of the guitar:

Hot funk, cold punk, even if it's old junk, it's still rock and roll to me.

-Billy Joel