Doing an 8" round cake tonight with a pond theme. I want to have the little boy's name standing up on top of the cake, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to do it and make it sturdy. His name is cooper, so I can't use the alphabet cutters I have on gumpaste since it would be way to big. I thought about royal icing or chocolate, but then how do I make it stand up. Any thoughts?

make them out of gumpaste, glue a popsicle or cookie stick on the back and stick them in the cake. I've found this to work best.

You can draw each letter in gum paste, like they mention before and let them dry.
Or make a plate and paint them.
I made you this using illustrator, they look 3D, but they are painted on a flat surface.
Good luck!

If you do the chocolate or RI, you just make one or two "extensions that would stick in to the cake. That is what I did on the purple dotted cake with the "13" in my photos.

Go get some thin barbecue skewers. Measure them out to the right height and then put the letters onto the barbecue skewers. The skewers will actually touch the bottom of the cake board. You want the skewer to go at least half way through the letter. Also - don't travel with the skewers in the cake. You have to wait until you get there to put them in.

If you try to put them in at home and then take them out, they will rip because the hole has already been created. Hope this helps.

I just piped melted chocolate onto wax paper and then when it set up I flipped them over and attached skewers to the back with more melted chocolate and stuck it in the cake when it was hardened. Siimple and a LOT quicker than waiting for gumpaste to set up. You could even print out the name in a font you like and trace over it. You could do each letter individually or all joined together. If you join them together I would put a couple skeweres along the whole length of the name to be on the safe side.

another way to alleviate them ripping through the cake is to insert a drinking straw in the cake and then stick the skewer inside of that. Although with all 3 of these (they were also 8" rounds) I just cut the skewer so that it was almost as long as the cake was thick and it held very securely. I put them in and took pics and then removed them and put them in a small bakery box with paper towels underneath to cushion them and then reinserted them when I got to their houses and none of them had any problems! I didn't use straws for them either, but that is an option that I use especially when putting something like this on a sheet cake since they're only 2" high instead of 4"

Very easy way.. at my local dollar store I found colored candle letters on sticks. They have the whole alphabet - very cheap to buy. I used them to spell out my son's name (Clayton) on his McQueen Cars cake. It was also very colorful!