Attaching LOTS of dragees to a cake side.

I’ve never done a cake using this many dragees before but I did recently decorate a 21st birthday cake with dragees to look like fireworks. (the photo is on my page but it only shows the front of the cake and there were exploding dragee fireworks on the back as well.) I piped on little dots of royal icing, ten at a time and then quickly attached the dragees not giving the royal icing time to dry. It didn’t take as long to do as I thought it might and the dragees were stuck, rock solid. None of them came off and they were on for three days before the cake was cut. I also coloured my royal icing so that it was the same colour as the fondant and it didn’t stand out then. However, a thin layer of royal icing with the dragees stuck to it just might work as well? But if you roll your dragees when you’re putting them on in bulk they’ll end up covered in royal icing. Slow and steady may be the safest way to go. Just charge more for the time and hassle.

I have seen this cake popping up all over Pinterest – it is very stunning! Royal icing should definitely work, but I wonder if piping gel would make things easier. Put a thin layer of piping gel on a section and then load it up with a handful of dragees. I would test it on a small cake before I started on the real one! Good luck, please post pics when you’re done!!

I would use royal icing a little at a time. One ting I certainly would not use is sugar glue, it takes colour away from the dragees

I agree with everyone on the royal icing (or if you don’t want to make a whole batch of RI just for dragee-sticking, I would also suggest piping gel). I just did a cake a few weeks ago with a good amount of dragees at the base and top of the cake and I started by using sugar glue, then when I realized what it was doing to the dragees, I switched to royal icing. I also noticed that it seemed like the dragees attached with sugar glue never really seemed to dry onto the side of the cake… they just stayed wet :(

Thank you all for the feedback! I am definitely going to look for something to cover in some fondant and try both the piping gel and royal icing methods and see what works best.

update: today I tried out different methods of attaching the pink dragees to fondant. I covered my mini wondermold pan with extra fondant I had and tried the piping gel first. It worked so well I didnt even bother with the royal lol. They stuck really well and I even peeled the fondant off the pan and wiggled it around to make sure they wouldn’t pop off and only 3-4 popped off! Bottom line is piping gel works fantastic for this design!