I am going to make a guitar and I was wondering about carving the cake into the shape: should I refrigerate the cake first to firm it up? and should I do a crumbcoat on it before cutting it as well??

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

thanks : )

Freeze it first, don't refrigerate. (The refrigerator tends to dry it out, but freezing will actually make it more moist!) Carve first, then crumbcoat -- there's no point in applying a crumbcoat you're just going to cut off!

That makes sense : ) Thank u for the help! I appreciate it : )

I've never actually carved a cold or frozen cake myself, so that is a step I always leave out and haven't had any problems doing so.

Crumb coat after carving, other wise you will end up cutting alot of it off. Plus that is what seals in all the crumbs so you don't have the crumb issue when icing it.

Yes, Holly is right, freeze the cake and then carve it. I did a guitar cake (it's in my pics) and it was one of the first I have ever carved. I just cut a shape i wanted out of paper and laid it right on top of the cake.

I like to chill my cakes before carving. But only for a few minutes to firm up the outside of the cake. Not frozen solid, otherwise it would be impossible to carve and would take forever to thaw.

A few minutes = 20 minutes minimum. Longer if it's a bigger, thicker cake.

Frozen cake is just so much easier to handle; you can cut and arrange without worrying about squishing the cake or keeping each layer or piece supported as you move it around. I suppose it's not necessary if you are just, say, cutting a shape out of a single large sheet cake -- but if you are flipping and rotating and stacking different shaped pieces, I think it would be awfully hard to do it without freezing, especially if your pieces are large.

IME the cake thaws to a frost-able temperature pretty quickly -- by the time you've got the pieces cut and placed where you want them, the cake is usually still a bit chilled but not frozen any more, and you can crumb coat it then.

I usually bake the cake a day or two before assembling, so it goes in the freezer overnight at least. I've never had one be too hard to carve right out of the freezer.