I am making a cake for my sister-in-laws baby shower next weekend and I need some advice. I want to do the baby's name in a cute, girly font and just stick each letter on the cake individually. I have in my head to pipe them out of royal icing and let them dry. Will that work? Is it the best way of going about it? Thank you all for your answers - I so appreciate the abundance of help on this AWESOME site!

I really don't know much about royal icing. But if you have the sugarpaste(fondant) extruder, you can use the disc with the biggest hole and do the name and let it dry completely. Then you can stick it on the cake.

HTH.

I don't have an extruder. I'm fairly new tro this and don't have a lot of equipment. I've been reading and I thought about getting a clay extruder from Michael's or Hobby Lobby....would that work?

If you stick royal icing letters into buttercream frosting, they will start to breakdown because of the moisture. (you could do it right before you display and serve the cake so they don't fall over) I use candy mets for monograms and it works really well. I just tint white candy melts to the color I want and put it into a disposable piping bag. I think I usually use a #3 tip and pipe the letter onto was paper. Make extra to allow for breakage, then pop them in the fridge! They come off the paper really easy, and you can decorate with them far in advance without worrying about them!

Good luck!! HTH

Debbie

I second the suggestion of using the candy melts. I used them to make the snowflakes on a wedding cake I did last year (in my pictures) and they held up really well. I also piped some out of royal icing and they weren't nearly as sturdy. Here's a suggestion: Print the name in the font you like in MS Word and then lay wax paper over the top of it and then pipe the name over that using the candy melts. Good luck!

I made a name out of fondant before and it worked. I rolled the fondant onto "logs" and then formed them into the letters I wanted, stuck floral wire into each letter and let them dry on waxed paper for three days or so. Peeled them off carefully and stuck them right into the cake!
Girls b-day cake in my pictures with flowers and bugs.

Thank you all so much! I think I will try the candy melt method - I think I would be more comfortable with it. My last question...what do I use to color the melts? Gel color? I know water messes up the consistency, so would the gel work?

That's where you're going to hit a snag. You can just color chocolate. It will seize. You can do it if you add the color very, very slowly. You can also add a tiny, tiny bit of crisco to it if does start to seize. You can add powdered coloring if you have that without a problem. They make special candy coloring. I really like my extruder. They aren't very expensive. But a cheaper way to roll fondant into uniform logs for shaping names is to roll it into a snake shape and put it between to dowels the size that you want your log to be and roll it back and forth.