I need to make a hula hoop to use with a bear cake. Any ideas what to use , it is going on a cake use a stand up bear pan.

I'd use straight gumpaste or even pastillage (there's a recipe on here; it dries very quickly so you have to work fast, but it dries very hard). It would help if you have a clay extruder to make the work go faster and come out more evenly. Otherwise, just roll out a snake of gumpaste as evenly as you can, put it in the shape you'll need and let it dry for 3 or 4 days. It should be hard enough to stand up by itself, so you can do pretty much what you want to with it.

Does it need to be edible? If not, you could make one from some hardware-store tubing. (Same method hoop aficionados use to make their own, just with smaller-diameter materials.)

If yes, other than forming gumpaste, you could look for, or make, a ring-shaped variation of one of those old-fashioned candy sticks. The typical spiral is even the same as on a traditional toy-store hula hoop.

Holly