Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I need to make several trees (the deciduous type not Christmas type) for a house and garden cake. I have searched the internet and found little in the way of tutorials to help other than one which suggested taping grape stalks to florist wire which I think would be very fiddly, time consuming and thus expensive. Has anyone any other ideas, please?

Hi Lynne

How realistic would you want the trees to be? I found Liz Mereks grape stalks and florist wire trees very effective but I guess it could be fiddly if you have lots to make.
There are lots of other suggestions here:
http://www.cakecentral.com/forum/t/656427/gumpaste-tree
Some of those suggestions include using wire armatures. If you’d like to go that route there are hundreds of tutorials online which show how to make the armature. Here is one:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Quick-and-Easy-Model-Wire-Trees/
To see more just google ‘wire tree armature’.
The wires would have to be covered with either chocolate or sugarpaste/gumpaste and then decorated with either cut out leaves or coloured cereal.
If you wanted to give a little artistic license they could be made as in the following tutorials:

Cartoon Peppa Pig style Cake Tutorial | CakeFlix

4-trees

The Princess and the Pea

Another way would be to make templates from photographs of real trees and cut them out as Paul did with the characters in the Peppa Pig tutorial. Once you have the shape it can be painted and added on to. If you have good piping skills, trees can be made by pressure piping and over piping with royal icing. This method does take a few days drying time depending on depth of structure.
These are just a few ideas that come to mind. Hopefully other members will be able to add.