I am making fondant peony flowers for my little girl's birthday cake. I am using straight fondant, MFF recipe, and it's working well except that as the petals are drying, they are becoming incredibly fragile, brittle and little pieces are breaking off. I'm being extrememly careful with them but never the less, the thinnest portions of the petals crumble at the slightest resistance. Am I using the wrong medium? Should I be using gumpaste instead?  

I will attempt to insert a picture of what I'm working on.

ABeautiful! I use at least half gumpaste. For my peony I used all gumpaste.

I don't have much expierence with MMF, so I can't say for certain if it is a good medium for this.

Thank you! My little girl is turning 5 and this is a good excuse to make some flowers to put on the cake. I may try doing one with gumpaste just to see the difference. Is gumpaste a little more sturdy or flexible? I wish I knew what I was doing.

once fondant dries there is not much that will stop it from crumbling on you. Gumpaste has gum in it that makes it more pliable and stretchy when fresh and stronger and more study when dried. Very nice job on the peony- but when making this type of flower you should really have gumpaste or you may be in tears later!

Lovely Peony, you will have much more success with them using Gumpaste, We actually call it flowerpaste here as we use it for flowers. 

Thank you everyone! I began to suspect that I needed to use something else when it came to flowers and you all have confirmed that for me! I will figure out the gumpaste situation and get going with that. I wondered how people made these delicate flowers without half the petals cracking apart before they even get to applying them to a cake.