re: Jungle Cake

Thanks everyone :-)

Clary I rolled out some brown fondant that i added cmc or gumtrag or tylose to, Its called different things in different countries :-). I rolled it out to be about 50mm thick so I could insert a wooden skewer up the middle of the fondant, the thinkness of it i mean. .I just dip the skewer in a bit of water so it sticks. then I just free hand cut a tree making sure the skewer was positioned in the center of the trunk of the tree and poking out so when everything dries hard i could stand it up and stick it into the cake. I always take the trees out and just put them on when i get to the venue but they are removed easily and once they are dry are very sturdy. I then made some green gumpaste and rolled it very thinly and free hand cut the cloud looking shapes to be the foliage. Once these were dry I stuck them to the branches of the tree with roayl icing. The little monkey was made on a toothpick and i just stuck the toothpic into one of the branches of the tree and it stayed in place without any trouble. I always make two of anything like this incase of breakages etc but so far i havent used the second one but no doubt when i dont make it ill need it lol. If you are not conmfortable free hand cutting things with an exacto blade just print out a template of a tree cut it out, lay it over your fondant and cut around it :-). same with the foliage. xx Hope that helps.