I'm making a "luau" cake and I need to make a palm tree. What's the trick to keep the palms from weighing down and eventually breaking off the trunk?

i imagine there are a lot of ways to do it but when i did mine, i made a core of brown fondant around a wooden skewer. then i inserted the wired fronds into the core and put the whole thing in a narrow jar/glass to support the fronds while the core dried. then i took my strips of fondant (cut with the wavy edge of the pme ribbon cutter) and wrapped them around the core which reinforced the top part where the wire fronds were inserted (and then dried again). all my trees held nicely.
diane

Or you could use rice paper fronds dyed green.

When i did mine i wrapped brown fondant around a bubbletea straw and pushed the fondant down inside the straw a bit. Then i made my leaves from gumpaste on wires and was able to poke the wires into the fondant that i pushed into the straw to keep them in place. I left the bottom of the straw bare and hollow for 3.5 inches so i was able to push them all the way down into the cake. The travelled well like that.

I jacked mine up with toothpicks, skewers and Paper Towel until it dried.

I used gumpaste for the leaves and let them dry completely, then connected them to a fondant covered pretzel rod with green candy melts