Grand Piano Cake

Grand piano cake in the making…

I have two beautiful daughters who are teenagers now… I know I know… teens!! They have been learning to play music since they were little ones. Fortunately, all those years ago, we found the BEST piano teacher EVER in the WHOLE WORLD to teach our girls!!! So when their teacher asked ME to make her special birthday cake I was so thrilled to get to make a grand piano cake I did a happy dance 🙂

Not being a piano player myself, I studied up on designs, proportions and exact key placements before embarking on the project. I wanted it to be elevated on legs, rather than flat on the cake board, so I threw on the tool belt and custom made a 3 legged elevated cake stand measured to a template I made. Then I covered the base of the board with some of the teachers favourite sheet music and  lacquered it to give it that antiquey look. It turned out like this:

For the cake I made a huge batch of mud cake batter enough to fill 2 x 14” square cake tins. This makes a lot of cake but the length and width of the piano was 14 inches so, what can I say… go for it! Be warned though, these big mud cakes take a very long time to cook, generally over 3 hours each. Can you handle all those hours of chocolate baking aromas filling your house… Totally!!

Here are some progress pics.

Ready for the fun bit? 🙂 Carving the cake. Stack the cakes on top of one another on a working cake board, not the display one, layering dark chocolate ganache in between. Then carve the slab to match the template. Easy eh? Once that is done, cover the entire surface with that rich dark chocolate ganache you whipped up earlier and your piano cake is ready to play, well, play with fondant anyway. Lift it onto the raised board ready to decorate.

Cover the entire cake with black fondant. Then cut a piece to go on top of the piano with wood-grain coloured fondant (you can follow the same template for this). Detail this section with a sculpting tool (or the back of a paintbrush works just fine if you don’t have special tools) as shown in the above pic. Use wooden dowel painted with black food colouring to hold up the lid.

Make the lid by cutting a cardboard cake board guided by the template, then cover this board with a thin layer of black fondant on either side.  Tinker around with the ebony and ivories getting the placement correct, especially if you’re making it for a concert pianist! Add a music stand, a name plaque, and voila… your composition is complete…. Ta daaaaa

Seriously, we should have hired a professional piano mover to take this to the venue because IT WEIGHED A TON!

On the day of the party it was absolutely pouring with rain. We had to get the cake inside the venue without a drop of rain falling on it. OK… challenging… but with a few umbrella handlers in tow we made a ceremonious walk from the car to the venue and reached the cake table without a single drop of rain on it. Cake in place… now ON WITH THE SHOW… “Champagne!!!”

Thank you for reading my post. I would love to hear from you, so send me a little message on my blog and tell me how you got on with your piano cake, or if you have any questions let me know, or just drop me a line to say ‘Hi’ 🙂

EAT – CELEBRATE – ENJOY!!!