I am making an 80th birthday cake for my grandmother in October and I want to make fondant roses for the topper. My problem is that the fondant I use is beautiful for covering cakes and is very plyable and stays soft but I don't think this would work for the roses. I think it would take forever for the roses to dry. My question is do I use fondant or gumpaste? Can I mix some gumpaste into the fondant to help it set or should I just use only gumpaste?

I think you can mix 50/50 gumpaste and fondant and it dries a quicker, but I've only done it once now, So I am by no means an expert!

You can do 50/50 but a lot of folks have great success with Nicholas Lodge's recipe when it comes to making flowers. Here's the link:

http://www.nicholaslodge.com/gumpaste.htm

You might want to check if you can get tylose in Alberta but if not I know you can get it in Ontario for sure. Off the top of my head I know that Golda's Kitchen carries it but can't remember any other names right now.

Here's the link:
http://www.goldaskitchen.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=13129&step=4

gumpaste is best for realistic flowers, and dries super fast.
because of how fast you need to work with gumpaste, some people prefer the 50/50 mix, not quite as realistic, and longer to dry.
you can just do fondant roses, unless you make them lots in advance, they wont be really dry, but they will be nice and edible (gumpaste dries too hard to really be edible).
xx

thank you all for the help.....I will be looking for tylose here in Alberta