Hello fellow goodie makers...I am making a pirate cake with 2 palm trees on an island...I rolled out fondant and cut my leaves, have pretel rods for the tree trunks but for the life of me I can not get the leaves to stay on the pretel ...any help would be greatly appreciated, this is my only hurdle on this cake which is being picked up tomorrow....yikesssssss!

With thanks!!

Did you try royal icing? Just a thought.

I tried, royal icing, stiff buttercream and melted chocolate....can not figure out what I am doing wrong!

I had the same trouble with my palm trees. Mine never did work for me and I ended up having to pipe long leaves on, you can see in my pictures how they turned out, it is the Safari tiered cake.

Only after that did I even think about this other way, which may or may not work. My thoughts were to use royal icing to attach the leaves, then hold the pretzel upside down on the leaves until it was stiff enough to add more leaves. Like I said, it is just a thought, and if you try it out, let me know if it works. Maybe someone else will have a better suggestion.

Here is what i did. I made the trunks from RKT and then covered in chocolate. I put a line of Royal icing ( to match the leaves) on the back of the leaves, applied a toothpick leaving 1/3 of the toothpick exposed at the bottom. Once they dried, I stuck the toothpicks in the trunk.

Make your leaves or fronds all in one so there is no attatching but rather laying it atop. Do atleast three fronds out on one piece of fondant at a time. Stack two of those on each tree and you have 6 fronds for a nice full look. Make like a weird tiangle with elongated miss-shapened tips. And if you cut jaged edges on those they will look fabulous.

I used a pirouette stick (made by pepperidge farms - in the baking isle) for the trunk. I also used royal icing to pipe the palm fronds. I used my mini princess dress pan as a form and piped the royal icing in it and put a scrunched up paper towel in the center to dry overnight. When i put it on the cake I simply put the palm over the pirouette. The flat base in the pan made a nice level surface to put on the pirouette stick.

Finally, I used cocoa puffs for resemble coconuts.

Not sure I am making sense? You can see it on my Ariel cake.

depending on the size of the cake they are going on, i make mine 2d out of 50/50 gp/fondant, and attach the pieces with chocolate. they look pretty good. and i like how they sit up against the sides of the tiers too.

Hi!

The problem is the pretzel... it's absorbing the moisture in the frostings and returning to its doughy state.

U can try rolling out fondant and shoving a chopstick in it. If you have time to let it dry, do that then attach the leaves with Royal icing (I like it thick like a paste) and allow more drying time.

Best of luck!

Check out this link to a video on youtube that shows you how to make them work. HTH

I have to concur with Moniquea. I have found that I can take tootsie rolls and knead them until they are somewhat soft and form them around a dowel or piece of floral wire. They harden back up somewhat yet you can carve the intricate trunk work etc. Plus because they are candy they aid in sticking the leaves to them with royal or chocolate etc. Good Luck HTH

Thank you all soooooo much for the great tips and ideas!!! because I was in a time crunch, I could not start from scratch with all royal icing, but between that and the fondant leaves I already did, I think it is going to work...live and learn