How far ahead can I make icing cake toppers?

[TheHappyCamper]

Hi,
I'm doing a 4th birthday party for my dd in a couple of weeks and as it's the first full class party I've dealt with (25 kids), I'd like to do as much ahead as I can.

I am buying a large rectangle madera cake, pre-iced in white from ASDA. I have bought various coloured icings and am planning to model some Mr Men character cake toppers and put them on top!

I imagine this might be quite time consuming, so I wondered how far ahead I could do it? What happens to the icing - does it go off, or hard, or soft? How would I store the little models?

Any other advice would also be welcome. I guess you 'glue' them on with runny icing?

Hi. I made my hubby a f1 car last week for the top of his cake and kept it in a air tight container,put it on cake today and it was perfect. X

Ooo that sounds promising. Thanks!

You can make them weeks, or even months ahead of time - they will last indefinitely as long as they are in a dry place.

Thanks squiggle. Do they not go hard then? (or are they supposed to be hard?) I'd keep them in an airtight cake tin I guess.

Gah, I'm so clueless!

They are supposed to go hard and no one in their right mind would eat them anyway - so no need for air-tightness, just dry (and ideally cool).

Thanks for that! I can do cool, it's -2 and a blizzard here!

Seems a bit odd making them out of icing if they're not going to be eaten though

I am obsessive about everything on a cake being edible, and DD sometimes does eat icing figures, but fondant icing doesn't actually taste very nice.

If it makes you feel better, then if you are going to eat it, it tastes just as bad good hard as soft - it's no like it goes stale or anything.