My daughter wants a haunted house cake for her birthday. How can I make spooky trees? I've considered cookies or fondant...any other ideas?

If you use fondant, I would mix it half-and-half with gumpaste to speed drying time and add stability.

I saw on one of the food challeges that one baker used grape stems and dipprd them in chocolate for the scarey trees. i must say in the end they looked really well that way. Might be worth a try.

Sounds simple. Definitely worth a try. Just make sure no one tries to eat them!

Thanks to all the suggestions. I finally ended up using an ice cream cone (the flat bottomed kind) and pretzel rods as a base. I attached everything together with royal icing. After that dried I covered everything with brown royal icing and a star tip. I made different shades of brown and striping the bag. The effect is subtle but I think more realistic. I thought it looked fine. There is a picture in my photos with the haunted house cake.

Your spooky tree trunk turned out well. I was thinking more of scraggly, whispy branches, but this was definitely easier to pull off and you only need one for effect. Good call.