Hello Ladies, 

 I'm currently working with a children's events venue and I want to create some dummy cakes for the pictures that will go on both their website and mine. 

My question is when covering the cake dummies, do I use MMF or is there another medium I would have to use to get a good shelf life? If I use MMF how long will the cakes survive for? 

Thank you so much for your help! 

You don't have to use MMF - you can use any kindof fondant.  I've never used MMF so don't know if it has any special properties but I use regular fondant all the time and have no trouble.  However...you will need to bear in mind that some colours fade more than others, especially if stored in sunlight.  I usually keep my display cakes in boxes when not in use but I left one covered with a see-through bin-liner to stop the dust recently - went to get something from it the other day from the spare room and a beautiful hot-pink peony that is on the top is now, well, no longer hot pink thanks to the sunshine coming through the window!  Oops.

i made a mmf caterpillar cake that lasted for months and months -- it was cake not a dummy and i just tossed it after a while --

it never really showed any deterioration -- it was brightly colored and didn't fade either -- i copied it after a cake i saw at an ices convention

yes, snowflakebunny, i think white fades the worst in my experience -- goes yellow dingy

Thank you ladies, I will surely store it in a box. The color of the cake is pale pink and white. Hopefully if I keep it covered all the time it wont fade. 

What I am planning to do is make a four tier cake out of cake dummies. The parties at the venue are usually about 15-20 kids so they would only need one tier which they will buy and rent the other tiers depending on how many they want. So I would need those cakes to last for a long time (hopefully). :) 

they are not hard to refresh either-- every 6 months to a year maybe or longer even maybe just depends -- there's perma-ice too

http://www.globalsugarart.com/perma-ice-white-gallon-by-magic-line-p-16809.html