I am making a two tiered backyardigans themed cake for my sons birthday and was thinking about putting a slide from top tier to bottom. Will fondant work or should i use gumpaste. Also i am looking for a unique way to make trees. I made them out of sugar cones piped with royal for my wedding cake but dont really want to do evergreen type trees. Looking for something more cartoony. Please post pics if you have.

I would definitely make the slide out of gumpaste- just for strength and less drying time than fondant.

I did a cake with lots of evergreens here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kavingate/2635881784

It's Lorraine's method, I think. Anyway, you make fondant cones and then use curved nail scissors (you can buy them at Walmart) to snip out the boughs. It's very simple and MUCH faster than piping on ice cream cones!

I think that Lorraine has a video on YouTube that shows this. I'll go look...

I've made trees by laying a small wooden dowel or skewer on wax paper. Cover the dowel with melted chocolate melts. I use one of the little bottles you can melt it in with the small hole on the lid. I build on that until its bark looking. Make some branches that stick out also. Then, when the chocolate is good and thick and set, melt some green and kind of swirl it around the top of the tree for leaves. When the green is set, carefully remove it from the wax paper and use the skewer or dowel to set it into the cake. Hope this makes sense and helps some. If you have any questions, feel free to pm me.

Here is a picture of another way to make trees. I thought it was a really neat way to make them. I would think that you could wrap the fondant ropes around something if you wanted the tree to stick straight up and not lay against the cake. Hope this helps!!

I would also think that you could make little green leaves out of fondant and then stick a piece of spaghetti into the leave and then into the chocolate tree fondant. Although you probably couldn't do many.

I'm thinking about doing the same thing for a Sunday cake. I'll let ya know how it goes.

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=72934

I was just looking at my old 1992 Wilton yearbook today and they had slides from one cake to another. They used flower formers and iced the insides with royal icing. If gumpaste doesn't work, this could be an alternative (obviously wouldn't be as nice but just something to keep in mind.)