Fellow Cake Artists, I'm only curious which is your preferred method for fastening gum paste flowers or figurines to your cakes. I'm also wondering which dries faster/harder and overall adheres better. Personally, I've always used almond bark, for the mere reason it's inexpensively available.

Which are you partial to? And why?

I use royal icing and piping gel, mainly because they're what I started out using and it's habit now. Plus I always have royal icing around so it's easy when it's already made. Couldn't say whether ri is better than melted choc or any other material because I've not tried using melted choc yet.

Depends on the decoration and the setting. For simple, light decorations, water or "glue" will suffice. If it is something heavier or needing a stronger bond, melted candy or RI will work. Keep in mind melted candy will dry faster because it only has to cool, but will be temperature sensitive. RI will take longer to dry to you may need to support what ever it is while drying, but will not be temperature sensitive.

I found that when using chocolate as a glue, decorations were more likely to fall off, like a big bow between 2 tiers.

When I used water for a similar purpose, decorations stayed put and did not fall or come off.

AThank you all for sharing your methods. After reading them, I thought it was rather presumptuous of me to exclude royal icing, piping gel, etc as alternative adhesive methods.