I made my first big cake today and I was asked to make a big 40 as a cake topper. I only worked with gumpaste once before and that was last year at a Wilton class. I had no problems with it. Yesterday after I dyed my GP I started to mold it into the 40 shape and could not keep it from cracking. I kept adding shortening to it but it did not help. It worked great to do cut outs and I am really tempted to just trash the topper Any help or tips in case I want to attempt this again.

Hi

I have had that happen to me before and what i do now is I use a 50/50 mixture (gumpaste & fondant) and it works really well. It might take a lil longer to dry but it works well when trying to mold.

Or, if you have some gylcerin, maybe add a lil bit to a bit of the gumpaste and see if that helps