Thursday, August 23, 2012

Tips Galore!

For today, I thought it would cover one of my favorite things about cupcakes...  (One of my favorite things--I have many.)

Tips.  I love tips.  So many different kinds that make so many cute designs!

My favorite tip has to be a closed star, which looks like this:



I personally love Ateco, but there are dozens of different sizes and brands.  I feel like it's necessary to have a couple different sizes of tips so when you make different sized cupcakes, you're set.  The reason why I love this tip so much is because of one design you can do with it: the rosette.  I love the rosette!  It looks like this:



Another one of my favorites is a french tip.  The tip looks like this:


and comes out like this:


I  love how many lines it makes in the frosting. It's especially beautiful if you add some edible glitter and pearls. :)

Another really awesome one that I have yet to use is the basket weave tip.  As its name says, it's for mimicking the look of a weaved basket.  The tip I have is #47, but there are many more to choose from.


How cool is that?  It takes some time to master and actually do, but if you piped that all over the side of a cake, it would look AMAZING.  I hope to try it soon.


So, no matter what tip you use, remember to always use a coupler if you're planning on switching tips out often.  And my favorite new tip for frosting is to put your buttercream in a large sheet of plastic wrap, stick it through your piping bag and cut the end off.  Amazingly easy clean up and makes it easy to use multiple colors.


So stick it all the way through after you twirl the ends and snip that end off that goes through the coupler.  Tada!  A clean way to frost.  Never thought those words would go together in a sentence.