sorry, this is hard to explain - hope that you will understand and can help. I am making a bacherlor party cake. It will be 2 separated tiers. top tier is going to be small, beautiful wedding couple on it - saying "marriage, a wonderful institution" ....now my problem, on the bottom, I want to make it a jail cell with bars and the saying "if you like institutions" - I don't have a clue what to make the bars out of, they need to stand.........help!!!!!!!! please.

I want the bars to stand up.....I thought of using something like black licorice to string - but sounded pretty amatuerish. I'll try and explain better. I'm using the tier stand thing. Bottom layer is 10" then pillars about 12" opening 8" cake on top for bride and groom.

I am still learning abc of cake decoration. Here is my thought about this one.

Why don't you cut the skewer sticks to the height you want and roll it in fondant mixed with gum paste and let them dry. These could be used for vertical bars. With the same fondant and gumpaste mixture, cover the florist wire and make them the circle of your cake size. Let them dry and then stick the vertical bars into the cake and glue the circles at equal interval with gum glue. You might have to put some support until they stick (You can tie with some ribbon to hold until they dry)

If this works, let me know.

How about getting some of those large pretzel sticks and dipping them in dark chocolate. They are wonderful to eat and will serve your purpose without wasting anything.

pre make RI bars with a good sized round tip, when it dries it will be hard and just insert it into the cake like a straw or sucker stick. You could also use dowels (buy skinny ones at the craft store) and paint them black or grey or...
onother idea it to make then out of chocolate, same idea as the RI. You could prob do fondant if you have enough time for them to dry hard.

I think it would be easier to paint cookie sticks or lollipop sticks with black/grey food coloring (dilute of course)(or even the food writer markers). Let dry. Then insert into cake. Good Luck.

ok ladies, keep 'em coming! I don't have to actually put this together til tomorrow night. I just tried molding some chocolate, actually the part where you are supposed to put the stick. It came out just ok.......I like the idea of piping the chocolate. My cake store is closed now - never looked do they make black chocolate? I'm thinking maybe that w/some silver luster dust??

Dark chocolate with a little black candy color will get you black chocolate for sure. I do it all the time when I mold graduation caps. I wonder if you could dip spaghetti in the dark chocolate?

I want to see a picture when it's done please. My son works at the local jail and it might be a good cake idea for him.