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Decadent Desserts: How To Use A Piping Bag To Decorate Baked Treats
Decorating baked goods is an art within itself. It allows you to express your creativity while infusing a personal flair into your cake creations. From timeless designs to intricate floral shapes, a piping bag is a valuable tool in creating these incredible decorations. Piping bags are designed with a cone-like shape to easily dispense icing and buttercream over typically baked desserts such as cakes, pastries, cupcakes and cookies. When paired with a piping tip, these piping bags allow you to create intricate designs on your sweet treats. From lively iced flowers to smooth buttercream patterns, piping bags help you put the perfect finishing touches on your dishes.
Whether you're an experienced baker or new to the kitchen, once you get the hang of using piping bags and understand the uses of the coordinating piping tips, the practice will instantly elevate your dishes, with piping bags become a much loved and valuable addition to your ensemble of baking and cake decorating tools.
Quick Links
- Have Your Piping Tools Ready
- How To Assemble A Piping Bag
- Types Of Piping Bag Tips
- Using Icing For Eye-Catching Designs
- The Icing On The Cake: The Perfect Finishing Touch
- How To Ice Cupcakes With A Piping Bag
- Using a Piping Bag to Ice Cookies
Prepare Your Piping Bag
Before you start to decorate your creations, you should ensure both yourself and your piping bag are prepared for the task at hand.
Have Your Piping Tools Ready
In order to assemble your piping bag, you should make sure to have the relevant tools on hand. As well as your piping bag you also need your piping tips and a pair of scissors. First, consider your designs and ensure you have the relevant piping tips to create these designs. You should also consider shopping for a coupler for your piping bag. What is a coupler piping bag you may be asking? A coupler connects your piping tip to your piping bag and enables you to change piping tips with ease. This is handy when decorating with one piping bag or when wanting to use the same piping tip across multiple piping bags. It saves time in your decorating as you do not have to empty your whole piping bag in order to retrieve the tip.
How To Make A Piping Bag
There's nothing worse than having your tools ready and discovering you've forgotten one integral part. Fear not! Making a piping bag is easy and can be done with typical household kitchen items. To make your own piping bag, simply cut a portion of baking paper into a large triangle. You want to make sure you have opposite equal sides with one longer base side. Fold one bottom corner of the longer side to the top corner. Then wrap the other corner around the outside of this shape. You should end up with a cone-like design. Fold the very top corner piece over to keep this cone shape in place.
How To Assemble A Piping Bag
- To fit your nozzle onto your piping bag, place your nozzle inside the bag to the very end, make an indication of the halfway point up the nozzle, remove the nozzle and cut the tip of the bag to fit the nozzle. This makes it easier to dispense your icing through your piping tip.
- If using a coupler set:
- Cut the piping bag to the width of the base of the coupler.
- Start with making small cuts to prevent cutting off too much where the base may slip out.
- Place the base of the coupler inside the piping bag and screw the tip on the outside of the bag. - Create a cuff by folding down the top of your piping bag
- Using a spatula and spoon, scrape your icing or buttercream about halfway to three-quarters of the way up your piping bag, leaving room at the top.
- Push the icing down to the end of the piping bag
- Tightly twist the top of your piping bag. You may use a clip or rubber band to keep this in place.
Types Of Piping Bag Tips
In order for a piping bag to create such intricate designs, you should consider the type of piping tip you are using.
Round | Great for writing messages on cakes and cupcakes. They can also be used for creating dots and pulled dots, beads and other circular designs as well as in filling in shapes and designs. |
Star | Not just for creating star shapes, these piping tips are great for making other shapes with intricate lines such as zig-zags, rosettes and shells |
Petal | Excellent for designing a border around a cake, petal piping tips are particularly great for creating icing flowers and other curved shapes. You can also create stunning ribbon shapes with wavy borders. |
Flower | Perfect for making flower details in an instant, with one squeeze of your piping bag. From smaller flowers to large decorative flowers, this piping tip is easy to master. |
How To Use A Piping Bag: Using Icing For Eye-Catching Designs
Whether you're icing a whole cake or simply adding a few finer details, learning how to use a piping bag is pretty easy! The piping tip is what does most of the work for you. Hold your piping bag at the top of the icing. Gentle squeeze the bag to allow your icing to fall through, usually falling in the shape of the tip. More intricate designs may typically require slightly more skills and involve angling the piping bag or rotating it around in circles. Before decorating your baked goods, try practising your design on a piece of baking paper to ensure you've mastered it.
The Icing On The Cake: The Perfect Finishing Touch
You can use piping bags to create elegant finishing touches on cakes that coordinate with your party theme. Vintage style cakes have become quite popular in recent years and feature an array of differing piping decorations. From layered pulled dots around the base of the cake to larger swirls at the top of the cake, you can use icing to convey a particular theme. Read through our article on how to create a vintage style cake for more cake decorating inspiration.
Two of the most common designs in icing cupcakes are swirls and rosettes. These are a classic in the world of cupcake decorating and help to create designs as seen above. They are typically made using a star tip.
- To create a swirl: Gently squeeze the piping bag to create a small swirl in the middle of the cupcake, this creates a base for your swirl. Then using your piping bag, ice around the outside of your cupcake. Continue going around in a circle, layering the icing on top of another while moving slightly inward every time. Eventually, you'll have a cone or pyramid-like shaped swirl.
- To create a rosette: Starting in the middle of your cupcake, continue squeezing your piping bag, moving it in a spiral pattern until you reach the borders of your cupcake.
Using a Piping Bag to Ice Cookies
Cookies are an easy and delicious sweet treat to add to any dessert table. Great for bringing to a party or for preparing your home when hosting, cookies are instantly elevated when iced. You can use fondant to create designs that coordinate with the theme of your party. Once your cookies have cooled after baking, you have decided on your design and your icing is prepared in piping bags, it's time to decorate. Firstly start by making an outline of your design around the border of your cookie. From here, all that's needed to be done is simply colour within the border. For multicoloured designs, simply repeat the outlining process for each colour. You can find a great range of cookie decorating inspiration online at Spotlight!
Start Decorating With Piping Bags
Now that you know how to use a piping bag, you can instantly transform your baking creations. You can find a great range of cake decorating projects including a guide on how to colour icing, right here at Spotlight! You can also read through our creative articles for more inspiration. Be sure to check out our extensive range of baking and cake decorating tools to have you prepared for whatever recipe your experimenting with. Shop the full range, online or at a Spotlight store near you where a friendly member of staff can assist you in your purchases.
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