Rocking 40th Birthday Cake

Hello Everyone! 

Hope you're all ready for a fun, new twist on the "40th" birthday cake. No "Over the Hill" cakes here.....we celebrate the awesomeness that is 40! They wanted a German Chocolate Cake with a "Rocking 40" theme, with a lot of guitars. 

The biggest challenge I encountered with this cake project was the guitars. Molding them out of fondant was an option, but seemed rather tedious and time consuming. I found a really inexpensive chocolate mold on amazon that made that whole process a lot easier. I used different shades of blue candy melts in the chocolate mold and loved the results. I also used some Candy Melt Markers to draw on all the details. 

I also make some matching fondant stars in various sizes to help decorate the rest of the cake. 

I attached some of the star (and guitars) to floral wire so I could make a starburst topper for the little cake. 

***Sorry for the fuzz pic, I had shortening on the lens and didn't notice until after I delivered the cake. 

The German Chocolate cake came out wonderfully for the first attempt. I made two 8 inch cakes and let them cool while I worked on the frosting.

After the cakes cooled; I filled them with a caramel, coconut, pecan filling and stacked them. I covered it with a thin coat of chocolate buttercream. I was going to cover the cake in ganache so I did not want to make it too thick or overly sweet.

I mixed my ganache up (2:1 chocolate to cream), let it cool slightly because I still wanted to be able to pour it. And then started layering my ganache.

Layer One went on a little thinner than I expected but I wasn't too worried since I had more layers. This is the first time I had ever poured ganache over an entire cake, I normally just use it as a filling. I wish that I had taken the time on layer one to pop any bubbles and fix all the little imperfections that were starting to appear. Lesson learned I guess.

Layer Two of ganache went on a lot smoother and thicker. That little flaw on the top drove me crazy! That is why you should probably fix it on layer one. I tried to fix it at this point, because it became extremely obvious. But it didn't really make much of a difference.

Layer Three of ganache was wonderful and thick as well. I loved the look that ganache gives to the cake. I was very frustrated with that dang bubble on the top, but other than that the cake looked gorgeous. Haha! :)

After the ganache had set overnight I started to decorate the cake. The decorations were very easy to adhere to the ganache, which made decorating it a LOT easier than some other cakes I have done. But you can't pick anything back up, so make sure you have it where you want it. Haha!
Cannot express how much I loved this cake! The pictures really do not do it justice. The dark chocolate ganache color with the blues and silvers was absolutely amazing! I would love to use this color scheme again soon!

Here's the final product with the "40" topper :

As I said, the pictures do not do it justice. It is really gorgeous! And...isn't a "Rocking 40" cake so much more inspiring and fun than all of those gloomy and depressing "Over the Hill" cakes? :)