I have two dummy cakes I need to decorate. I want to cover on in wilton fondant, and do a royal icing basket weave around the other. They are for my wilton class displays and will be placed in a front window for some time.

Does anyone have any tips? Should I be worried about the fondant drying and cracking? Or the royal icing yellowing? They are just round pieces of styrofoam. Any tips would be awesome! Thanks so much in advance!

Make sure you lightly sand the dummie edges with a fine sandpaper otherwise the fondant will tear when you lay it on.The edges will appear a bit rounded but still very nice.The fondant won't crack unless you haven't rolled it out round enough..it begins to crack when there is stress put on the fondant when draping thus cracking.I don't know how long RI will stay in the light before it yellows but it probably is some time.

We have had royal icing dummies at our store for about 3 years and they look fine. They may be the slightest slightest off white color, maybe from dust, but they are not YELLOW. I mean, if they did start to yellow a bit people might just think they were supposed to be ivory. They will probably start to break before you have to worry about them discoloring too much.

Thanks to both of you, these are good things to know!

So I tried to cover my 6" dummy in fondant yesterday and it didn't work! With a normal cake I have the crumb coat that the fondant sticks to but with the dummy, I didn't put one on so it didn't really look right. Am I suppose to put a crumb coat of some kind over the dummy first and then put on the fondant? Again, this is going to sit in a window for a couple months and I can't use anything that will go bad. I didn't want to use royal icing because I was affraid it would dry too fast! Any ideas?

i have just covered a tired dummy in fondant and just lightly brushed it with water and it didn't want to really stick well at the start but it ended up sticking and looking great.

Though you could also use maybe water with a bit of glucose as well (i am gonna try that next time) or even just little smears of the glucose by itself if you REALLY want it to stick lol Other people have mention piping gel and stuff like that too. I don't see why the water/with glucose won't keep it on for a long time but if anyone wants to correct me feel free lol

Anyways that is just what i do, HTH

Once you have softened the edges with sandpaper, lightly spritz the foam with water. It should be just damp, not soaking. The fondant should now stick and will last a long time. I only make faux (styrofoam) cakes and this is how I always do it, no problem with the fondant not sticking.