Tutorial Tuesday: Using piping tips to elevate your cake

I’ve never felt super talented at cake decorating because it’s extremely intimidating. Which piping tips do I use? Do I need more than two? What is a coupler? What if my buttercream doesn’t pipe out the cleanest edges?

Because of this fear of piping imperfect butter cream decorations, I have always gravitated towards decorating cakes with flowers and fresh fruit. Fresh flowers are naturally so beautiful that I don’t have to do that much more to enhance the look of it. It was not until recently that I really started delving into the world of piping tips, couplers, and piping bags. For this Tutorial Tuesday, I will talk about some of my buttercream piping tips I used to get started with piping flowers and cacti! I still have so much to learn — my goal is to pipe a life-like peony.

The world of piping can be scary because there are so many types of piping tips. Open star tips, leaf tips, drop flower tips, round tips. Here are my favourite ones that I always keep in rotation:

1. Open star tip #8B (larger), #199 (medium), #32 (smaller) – to create dollops to add extra texture to the sides and tops of cakes

I used the same #199 open star tip to create cacti for my succulent cake. To make a cacti (instead of small dollops above), apply more pressure and slowly pull your piping bag up to build height. In addition to the #199 tip for the cactus, I used a small round tip to add small white dots to act as spikes for my cactus.

2. Petal tip #103 and #104 – to create petals for buttercream roses

3. Piping tip #1M – for large rosettes either on top of a cupcake or on the sides/top of a cake

4. Drop flower tip #2D – hydrangeas for cupcakes

5. Assorted leaf tips – to add accents to any of your piped buttercream flowers

I hope that served as good starting point for those wanting to start piping their own buttercream flowers. With just a few these piping tips you can magically create different effects with your frosting. Even by varying the angle, the pressure and the way you move the same tip, you change the look of your flowers drastically.