Pirate Island Birthday Cake

Today my little brother turned 17. For his birthday he requested a pirate island cake. This is what I came up with. I was given the suggestion of using large pretzel rods for the base of the palm trees by my Wilton instructor. The pretzel rods look great, but what I learned the hard way is that the pretzel rods soak up moisture from the cake over time and turn to mush. I ended up losing a palm tree because of that and had to replace the pretzel rod on another. The lesson to be taken away from this? Make sure that you put your pretzel palm trees into the cake very last thing instead of very first!