Perfect Your Cake Piping Skills With These Tips

You don’t have to be TLC’s Cake Boss Buddy Valastro to have excellent piping skills. Designs and writing can help transform an ordinary sweet treat into a super-special dessert. With the right skills and know-how, you can create a professional-looking cake using a simple decorating bag and assorted tips. An online pastry program can help you sharpen your piping skills to frost the perfect cake. In the meantime, follow these suggestions to make your vision a reality:

The perfect consistency
Having your icing be at just the right consistency is vital to a perfectly decorated confection. If the icing is too thin, it can leak out of the bag, leaving you with a mess. But if it’s too thick, you’ll be left with a lot of unnecessary squeezing. Your frosting should come out of the bag in a smooth line without breaking or cracking. Add water or milk to your icing recipe to achieve the correct consistency. Thin icing is best for printing and writing. Try adding 1 to 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup to each cup of icing.

Make sure to not overfill the bag
The contents of your decorating bag should rest comfortably in the palm of your hand as you cup and guide it through every swirl, loop and design of the decorating process. Make sure when you fill the bag, you shake down the frosting to eliminate any air pockets. Remember to hold the bag closed with one hand while icing your cake.

Learn to keep a steady hand
It’s not always easy to keep your hand perfectly still while frosting, but it’s a skill that should be perfected if you want a flawlessly iced cake. Try resting your elbow on the table and supporting the wrist of your piping hand with the other hand. The more grounded you are, the less shaky your icing will come out.

Practice makes perfect
Before applying the decorative frosting to your finished product, do a little practice beforehand. This helps you get comfortable with the different tips and techniques. Practice straight lines – if your test line has gaps or spaces, you’re not squeezing hard enough and you may be moving too fast. But if your line is squiggly, you’re not moving fast enough.

Keep it centered
Whether you’re writing “happy birthday” or “congratulations” on your cake, you want it all to look centered and balanced. To achieve this perfect look, mark the place of the first and last letters with a pin. This helps keep everything nice and centered and ensures that you won’t run out of room before you’ve finished.

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