Hi All! 

I have a cake on order which has pumpkin vines on the sides. I had originally planned on using gum paste or fondant for the vines but after some trial and error experiments, I've decided to pipe the vines in buttercream. 

The leaves I still want to make in fondant to create more 3 dimensional elements. I already had made many leaves with gum paste, using small dowels covered with gum paste for their stems. Since I'm not going to be there to serve the cake, I'm opting to use the more edible fondant with no dowels to avoid any accidental mouth injuries or having someone bite into a tough piece of gum paste. 

My question is, do I dry the fondant leaves out like I did with the gum paste ones or do I opt to keep them soft in airtight storage until I assemble the cake? 

Thanks in advance for your help! 

I would probably mix some tylose powder into the fondant and dry them out a bit.  I would also probably use some rolled up or kind of crushed up foil to lay the leaves on while they dry to help incorporate random curves into the leaves.

Agree with freckles   Roll the fondant as thin as you can & dry them on crunched up paper or foil   Though it isn’t necessary to add the tylose to get them to dry it certainly won’t hurt  

bump

Thanks all for your feedback. As for the foil, that's actually unnecessary for me at this point. I had some long 3 inch high rectangular blocks of floral foam and a hot cutter that I cut indents into along either of the long sides, laid the leaves in those in varied positions and got very realistic formed curves. But I do still appreciate having that go to should I ever be working without access to these DIY'd molds of mine. Will for sure use that technique in a pinch!! 

Thanks all for your feedback. As for the foil, that's actually unnecessary for me at this point. I had some long 3 inch high rectangular blocks of floral foam and a hot cutter that I cut indents into along either of the long sides, laid the leaves in those in varied positions and got very realistic formed curves. But I do still appreciate having that go to should I ever be working without access to these DIY'd molds of mine. Will for sure use that technique in a pinch!!