You may have beat me tonight but I will win in the end.

That is all I have to say.

I managed to save the cake and do something very basic because that's all I had time left for. It was a freebie anyway.

The last wedding cake I did had a ton of those on it! What I found is to make sure your icing is STIFF. Pull out away from the cake until it is the length you want it, then attach to the cake. I tried to make them for 1 1/2 hours with THIN icing and could not for the life of me get it to work. As soon as I switched to stiff - they piped just fine!

I feel your pain!

What burns me up is they are all perfect and when you transport the cake some of them break and you can never get the "replacement" ones as perfect as the originals.

My icing was too thin, plus it had some air bubbles, plus it was chocolate and the cocoa powder was a little lumpy. There was no way I could win that battle, LOL.

Luby - I know just what you mean!! You fix one on site and the two on either side then break!! GRRRR!!

I was told to wait until I was on site to put the drop strings on but I didn't want to hit anyone with the flying bag of frosting!!

I've been experimenting on the side of my cake pans and haven't improved enough to have nerve to put any on the real thing yet. I'll just keep practicing! lol

I've followed the instructions by the book and the &*%^$#^^ strings always get messed up. I always try to discourage customer from choosing a cake with drop strings. However, my last customer choose a cake decorated with them. Before I worked with the strings, I traced them by using tip #14, then made the icing very stiff and of course with a lot of corn syrup; then applied them. I must tell you...even using this method one of the darn things fell off!!!! I just gave up and from now on if I cannot do it at the reception place, I rather to just say NO to the customer. Is very depressing to watch all your hard work get ruined after so much time invested.

I don't know if this will help any of you but I read about a lady who made dropstrings out of fondant. She used a clay gun and then applied the strings. She delivered the cake and not one broke. I have not had a chance to try this myself but I wanted to put it out there. Good luck and I hope you all master the technique no matter what your approach!