Things to Know Before Cake Decorating

Equipment

• Should you decorate with nothing else, a pastry bag and assorted tips will help you go a long way in your project. You can make use of decorating bags made of polyester, disposable plastic or parchment. Bags can range from 8 to 18 inches, depending on the amount of icing you require. Use a coupler with your decorating bag, which is a plastic ring attachment placed at the tip of the bag that allows you to swap out different decorating tips without changing the bag. Tips vary in the shapes and effects they can create: a No. 1 tip is your standard round tip for piping dots and outlining, a No. 106 squeezes out drop flowers while a No. 65 tip creates leaves.

Icings

• As the workhorse of cake decorating, icings are the medium with which cake decorators ply their craft. Some icings are more appropriate for certain types of cake projects than others. A basic buttercream is good for most decorations, such as flowers, borders and writing. Royal icing, on the other hand, dries hard like candy and can be used for delicate stringwork. You can change the consistency for the intended application: stiff icing is necessary to make flowers, while medium consistency icing works better for stars and flat petals. Thinner icing works for leaves and writing.

Pressure and Positioning

• Important things to keep in mind when decorating with a pastry bag are pressure and correct bag positioning. In bag positioning,watch out not only for the angle of the bag relative to the work surface -- two angles are common in cake decorating, 90 degrees and 45 degrees -- but also the direction of the back of the bag, which you can envision as the hand of a clock that you sweep around the tip as the center. Pressure control of the bag allows you to pipe thin to relatively thicker results based on when you relax the hand or squeeze the bag.

Techniques and Designs

• For decorating with buttercream using a pastry bag and tips, you can create dozens of designs like roses, shells, vines, hearts, ruffles and swirls. To make a lifelike rose, you'll need decorating tips 12 and 104, wax paper and a flower nail to support the rose as you make it. Use the first tip to form the rose base, the second to create the bud and individual petals while rotating the nail. If you have a cake pattern in mind, transfer the pattern by placing parchment paper over the printed pattern and then outlining the pattern with piping gel. After flipping the piped parchment onto the cake and pressing the design onto it, you now have the template to build the pattern using icing.