Cake Decorating Ideas

I’m going to show you the basics of pastry bags and pastry cones. These are used to decorate cakes and cupcakes. The pastry bag is a wonderful tool to have when embellishing cakes. It can aid in making simple to intricate decorating techniques that will surely make all your cakes stand out. Handling a pastry bag is fairly easy and so is making your own bag for decorating.

To start I’ll show you how to make a pastry cone. You can make them out of cellophane, wax paper and parchment paper. I’ll show you how to make then out of parchment paper.

To start, roll your parchment paper out, you want to get a perfect square. We’re going to cut the square in half to make a triangle. One trick is to fold this edge to the top edge and the crease it, and the cut along this line. Then open it up, and your going to use that crease as a guide line to cut your triangle out.

Now it’s time to form the cone. I have one over here. I’ve drawn a line right in the middle of the longest side of the triangle and that’s where my point is going to form. To do this, take one corner and roll it in on itself so that the corner lines up down here. Wrap the other side around to the back. You’ll see that the two sides line up right down the middle.

Now you want tape to wrap it around the tip. This will prevent the bag from opening while your squeezing it. So there is your pastry cone. To fill it, hold it in your hand, take a spatula, put some frosting on it, place it slowly into the bag, then pinch your fingers down on it and slide the spatula out.

Now fold you edges down and you have you pastry cone. You can always cut a small hole or a large hole depending on what kind of piping your doing.

Now I’ll show you how to work with a pastry bag. You can use disposable bags or reusable ones. This one is a reusable one. Your going to need couplers and tips to go along with this one. Open the bag and place a coupler inside, this will allow you to change tips.

Choose the tip that you want to work with, place it on then take the ring and put it in top and screw it down. This will hold the tip in place.

Now we want to fill it. Turn the top edge over, cup your hand like a “C” and place the bag over it. Take your frosting and scoop it inside. You only want to fill about half way. This will give you more control. Now bring the side back up and twist. This will create a pressure inside the bag. Squeeze a little frosting back into the bowl to make sure there’s no air bubbles.

Now let’s practice piping. Twist the bag at the top.Your going to grasp it like this and this is where your going to squeeze. Guide with you other hand. I’m going to do some lines.

That’s a pretty straight line. If this happens to you, it means you squeezing too hard and not moving the bag fast enough. If this happens, where you get little breaks. It’s means your not squeezing hard enough and your moving too fast. So try to get a balance, just keep practicing going back and forth.

I’m using a round tip. Why don’t we try a different tip to see what it can do? The great thing about these pastry bags is that you can change the tips and get different effects. Let’s try a star tip. Let’s start with a shell border.

Your going to angle your bag at about 30 to 45 degrees, touch down to the paper and squeeze and hold in place until it starts to bulge. Then release the pressure, pull down and let’s repeat. The active release in pressure is called tailing off. Ideally it will come to a nice point overlap that point with next one and continue.

To make a rosette, you hold the bag perpendicular to the surface, squeeze, rotate the bag and then a quick motion of the wrist to tail off. So there you have some ideas about what a pastry tip can do. A pastry cone is good for lines or writing. I’ll show you how to write.

To do a letter, a great way for beginners, is what I call bubble letters. Start with a dot by squeezing a holding in place, pulling straight down and squeezing a holding in place again to tail off.

There are a lot of other piping techniques that can be done to make your cake even more beautiful. You can do basket weaves, petals and flowers depending on your preference. But make sure to practice first on a wax paper, to ensure that you are comfortable in doing the different cake decors.

If you want the line to be thicker, cut the hole bigger. Just remember to keep the scissors perpendicular to the bag. If you cut it at an angle the frosting will come out all messy.

So those are a few basic tips. Have fun decorating.