I'm trying to model a figure of this dragon for a cake, and I'm having trouble getting the wings attached. I tried attaching wire to a dowel and hanging the wings from the wire, but the wings keep tearing and falling off the wire due to the weight of the gumpaste.

If anyone has any ideas or advise, I would greatly appreciate the help. Thanks!

Anyone?

Hi, might I suggest drying the wings off the body first. Then insert into a premade hole with Royal icing later. Roll your paste really thinly as well.

There is a couple of options here:

- gelatin wings.
- pastillage wings (you'd have to let them dry on the wire completely).
- pulled sugar wings.

The key is to be sure to let the wings dry (on the wire) 1st, then add on to your figure. The gum paste would work this way too.

Hope this helps :0)

Gelatin is the first medium that came to mind because they are so light.

The two mediums I might think to use would be rice paper or sugar veil wings

Rice paper or waffer paper & sugar veil are good ones too!
You just have to work with it & go with the one that you like & have the most fun with :0)

I would do some kind of dowel-and-wire armature, as you say you tried. And then sugar veil for the actual wings so they will be light and flexible.

Your other option would be to go with all-gumpaste winges... but they would be frighteningly fragile.

Thank you everybody. I think I'll try all 3 suggestions (gelatin, sugar veil & drying fondant on the wires) and hope that one of them works out!

Not to hijack the thread .... but I am doing something very similar for this weekend, and am wondering how the gelatin wings would work? I've seen how to do gelatin fairy wings (with an impression mat and such), but if I were going to make spiky large wings for a dragon, would I just drape the gelatin cut outs over wire, or should I place the wire frame into the gelatin as it's drying, or just do it with no wire frame? Total gelatin novice here ...

Lisa, this worked well for a fan, and maybe you can adapt the idea for the dragon's wings.

This fan is SugarVeil spread thinly into a sheet [we chose a glossy finish for SugarVeil by spreading it onto a shiny silicone mat. For more of a matte finish, use a matte-finished silicone mat, or the back of our Lace Confectioners' Mat]. When set, we stenciled using SugarVeil colored gold. The tiny dots were made with the Icing Dispenser; the reinforcing spines are rice noodles.

An Asian grocery is a great source for thick and thin bean/rice noodles, which are really helpful to use as supports for many shapes.

Michele at SugarVeil

That's gorgeous, emilyg!! Wish I'd seen this sooner - I've never tried sugarveil. I guess I'll have to investigate!

Hey, LisaR64... Just saw your cake in the gallery. Great job on it! How did you do the wings? Doesn't look like gelatin, but cannot really tell from the photo.

Thank you endymion. I really struggled with that one for some reason. I actually made 3 sets of wings, one of gumpaste, one of gelatin & one of sugar veil. I think any of the 3 would have worked, but I used the gumpaste wings.

I used a wire armature for the dragon with wires sticking out on each side to hold the wings.

I cut the wings out of fondant and added details, then I turned over the top edge of the fondant to form a tube and stuck a dowel through it. As it was drying, I kept twisting the dowel to keep it from sticking to the tube.

Once it was completely dry (about 3 days), I slipped the wings off the dowels, and slipped the tube part of the wing over the wire armature & added hands. Hope that makes sense. It was far from what I envisioned, but I learned a lot making it.

Well, those wings look great to me! Thanks for sharing your method.