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The plain tip/nozzle... Not just for writing! Get creative and pipe toppers of your choice!

Published 26 September 2012 by Francine Appleby

The plain tip/nozzle comes in many different sizes, varying from a very tiny one to a very large one. The tiny one being used for fine detail and the different sizes graduating up toward the larger one can be used for piping lettering, to write with and other applications. The very larger of the plain tip/nozzle can be used for piping toppings of frosting on cupcakes and piping detail for larger cakes. You can easily achieve some great toppers just by drawing an outline of your topper to be piped on to the back of a piece of greaseproof paper to guide you. Once you practice enough or if you are already confident enough you can pipe free hand.

Royal icing is a great icing to use for toppers as it sets really hard and will be easy to remove from the greaseproof paper. Buttercream frosting can also be used, but will require more care when removing it from the sheets. With both the buttercream frosting and royal icing, I would suggest that any toppers you pipe are left to dry for at least 24 hours before peeling them away from the paper. Another option is to pipe directly on to rice paper and after drying for 24 hours trim around the topper with a small pair of scissors so that there is no rice paper visible Cartoons, badges, animals, hats, furniture, vegetables, fruit, anything you want to detail can be created, if you can draw it, then you can also pipe it too. Veronica Stillwater included this variation of topper in one of her blogs too! Check out the link for the recipe and the snoopy toppers! So cute.blog/2012/07/vanilla-date-cupcakes-with-the-added-luxury-of-double-cream-in-the-cake-mix-for-a-luxurious-texture-and-topped-with-snoopy-toppers! I have included photos and you could easily draw your own design, cartoons, vegetables etc. onto greaseproof paper with a pencil or find a picture online, print it out and place under a sheet of greaseproof paper. The photos show a batman symbol, witch's hat, and a pumpkin. I thought with Halloween approaching I would get some practice in before the end of next month.

 

There is a really scary looking witch that I have piped which would be great on top of a larger cake, although it's a little Freddy Krueger turned witch and slightly abstract. It did gain some attention from visiting friends who wanted to learn how to be able to do it. The witch's hat, batman symbol and pumpkins would all be great once dried out for toppers for cupcakes or smaller cakes The pumpkins are really easy to do using a medium sized plain tip/nozzle. You start by piping the 2 outside curves in the rounded shape of a pumpkin, piping whilst applying pressure to allow the frosting or icing to ooze and then repeating with 2 further lines inside these lines on either side. Pipe a final line down the centre and then repeat by piping over this line on top again to create a 3D effect, again applying pressure to allow the frosting to ooze out. I will post another way to create a witch's hat and pumpkin toppers with a recipe using pumpkin for the cupcakes, so look out for that post the week before Halloween! I found that when piping it was really important to use the correct bag as I had used a nylon one, which allowed for some of the liquid of the mixture of icing to ooze out on the outside, almost like it was sieving the icing and the result was a stiffened mixture of dried out powder inside the bag and most of the liquid on the outside. I am looking into all the different bags at the moment. There are disposable piping bags, various different brands where the bags are made of different materials, look out for next week's post where I will be detailing the different options for piping bags.