Hi, I am making a simple 9in round cake for my Sisters bday. She loves dalmations, so the top of the cake I will have a dalmation laying under a tree in the grass. My problem is that I want to do a 3d tree with red, yellow and brown (fall colored) leaves and am not sure how to. I don't know if fondant, gumpaste or something else would work better. If someone has an idea can you please help. Her birthday is on friday.

I've made one before. I used wire, straws and dowels as the structure for the tree, then wrapped it all in floral tape and brushed it with egg white, then covered it in marshmallow fondant. Gumpaste would probably work better but at the time I wasn't that big on gumpaste. I also used a piece of foamcore for the base of the tree, with one dowel sticking through the foamcore and I put some dowels underneath it in the cake to help support it. I used a narrow veiner to make indentations in the bark. It was a pretty tall tree...the cake it's sitting on is a 9x13.

OMG!!!! the bear in the woods!!!! Now I know the answer!!!!!

I've done trees (only about 6" tall, though) with a dowel or a bamboo skewer in the middle, and modelling chocolate around it. It's also easy to do small bits of colored modelling chocolate for leaves and stick them on.

HTH

The trees that were made FN challenge Edible Cities the other day were grape stems dipped in melted chocolate. They looked really neat especially if you want a lot of braches

Love the tree Judi!

You can also use melted chocolate mixed with cornflakes to make the leaves. I've also use marshmallows with cornflakes and melted fondant with cornflakes.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your great ideas. First I didn't have any ideas and now i have to decide which one to use.

I had seen that FN challange that you are talking about, but I missed that part. Dang it. I love that show!!!