I am trying to make palm trees for a cake on Saturday. I was using the method in the 2008 Wilton book. I made the trunks around the dowels and scored them. They look great. I then cut the leaves and let them dry on the flower formers. Again, they look great. Then I attemped to put the leaves together, and it was a disaster. They won't adhere to the green ball of fondant in the center, and they keep breaking in half. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or another method to assemble them? I don't think I can find plastic ones by Saturday.
What did you make the leaves out of? Straight fondant, fondant/tylose or fondant/gumpaste or gumpaste?
I used green or brown candy melts to secure mine, set up super fast and strong! Here's a thread from a little while back about palm trees http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-6860537-.html#6860537
That is exactly what I want the tops of my trees to look like. I used the Wilton green fondant. It's so dry on it's own, that I didn't have to add anything to it. It got hard over night. Everytime I try to attach them to the trunks though, they break apart. I'm at wits end here.
Candy melts or melted chocolate chips should help. Stick them on and it should only take a few minutes for them to set up, might even stand with them in the open freezer door, just to speed the process up.
Oh yeah, blink my eyes too hard and they'd break, lol! the candy melts were a life saver, made a firm believer out of me!
I'm working on some palm trees right now. I made the leaves, let them dry, then used royal icing to put them together. I also stood my "trunks" up in some royal icing to give a sort of platform to set the leaves on. I let all that dry good. Now I'm going to glue them together with the royal icing. I do think I used little to much royal icing in middle of leaves, but had issues with gumpaste leaves not drying hard enough. Not sure if this is the best method, but we'll see.
Mommafixit, those are the trees from the Wilton book. Or at least they look the same. I can't get mine to look like that without breaking the leaves. How did you do it?
Is that just royal icing in the center? It's not connected to a fondant circle?
maybe you would be better assembling the leaves before they dry? then they cant break so easily. or, make them out of gumpaste, as it dries much stronger so can take a bit more handling.
xx
I made the leaves with gumpaste and used royal icing to put them together. I did not use any fondant.
First I would like to thank everyone who replied. I have figured out my problem, and it was nothing more than decorator error. I came home today and looked at my leaves and realized that I had been trying to put the wrong ends together. Once I turned them around, it all worked out. OOOPS!!!!
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