I'm a newbie and I'm having problems with getting the sides of the barrel dry/hard enough to stand up. I have tried gumpaste and fondant (ready made for both) and let them dry over night but they still are falling over. How can I get them to get hard enough to stand up around the edge of the cake? Thanks on advance!

Are the barrel sides..."boards"...flimsy? bendable? How are you trying to attach them to the cake? Are you using anything to glue them to the cake?

The sides of the barrel are sticking fine to the buttercream frosting but the top end of the "wood" pieces are bending in towards the cake and eventually falling over because they are too bendable and soft.

When I did mines, I added tylose powder, make sure you do not make them to thin. That might be why they are bending. Mines were thick.

I love that ducky cake, how cute! I also wanted to add that maybe it will take more than 1 day for the fondant to dry. I just had to cut 100+ stripes for a wedding cake & after 24hrs, the pieces which are about 1/2" wide, 4" long & only 1/16" thick were NOT dry at all... it was the ready-to-use kind as well. Even after 48hrs they were so easy to bend. I know a lot of those type of items are made well in advance. Sorry this is happening to you, but don't give up! Hopefully you have time to let some dry? A week or so?

also if you want to stick them on the sides before they are totally dry you can stick a skewer on one side (down into cake) just till they dry ... then they will dry standing up and you remove the skewers.... that is how I did the fondant on my purse cake.