Dear all,

After my 2-tier cake, I have a request from a friend to make two figurines for her friend's wedding cake. She needs it in April next year which allows me time to practice and play (jumping for joy)

My question are...
do I use gumpaste or fondant for the figures?
Which one will be able to last on a flight of 2 hours and most probably another 2 hours of drive and then a few more days to the wedding?
Is it really difficult to make the figures?
Do anyone eat the figurines?

Thanks in advance for any advises.

(I am already looking through all the links for tutorials for making figurines... this place is simply wonderful)

I found an adorable bride and groom figure in a clay molding book that I bought at Hobby Lobby. Looked fairly easy too. I would use 50/50 fondant gumpaste to practice with but for the final I would use 100% gumpaste or 75%gumpaste/25% fondant. Just a personal preferance. I like working with gumpaste better then fondant. Gumpaste is not so brittle. Good luck on the cake.

I use 1/2 fondant and 1/2 gumpaste. I'm fairly new at figures too but have been having lots of fun doing them. They dry hard so although they are edible you probably wouldn't want to eat it. Check my photos, I just made a boy scout for a cake I'm making next week. If you pack it probably I think I'd be easy to transport them. Hope this helps.

I prefer to use marshmallow fondant + tylose powder.

To learn to make figures you should purchase a tutorial (or several) from Lorraine McKay...they're amazing, she's amazing!

Her tuts are step-by-step and very inexpensive: http://www.extraicing.co.uk/#/sugarcraft-tutorials/4542219227

If you use fondant, you can add CMC powder to reach the consistency you want that way you get the best of both worlds to some extent as it will be more mouldable and the final product will dry harder and be more transportable than if you had just used fondant I think HTH

I've used half fondant and half gumpaste, with CMC (tylose) and all gumpaste. I like the results I get with gumpaste best, but that's because I live in a very humid climate, and none of this stuff really gets totally hard like it would in a drier place.