How to Use Piping Tips… For Beginners

How many piping tips do you have?  And how many different brands?  If you’re anything like me, you’ve got dozens and dozens of tips and they seem to be from multiple brands.  Some of them have labels, some of them don’t.  Let me show you how to use piping tips and stop feeling overwhelmed.

 

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This post was originally published on July 16, 2020.  It was republished on December 5, 2024 with updates.

 

Story Time

 

Ever since I launched Bakes & Blunders, my birthday and holidays have meant tons of fun baking tools and accessories.  And I love them all!  But it can also be a bit confusing.  My bestie gave me a giant set of piping tips one year and they just kinda sat around mostly unused for far too long.

Thing is, I just had no idea what to do with them.  There’s no brand or labels on the tips, so I didn’t know what to do.  If you’ve ever looked at a bunch of piping tips, it can be a bit tricky to figure out what designs they can all make at a glance.

 

 

Getting to Know Your Piping Tips

 

How could I ever expect to use these tips if I didn’t even know what looks I could achieve with them?  So I started working my way through my collection and taking each tip one by one for a little “get to know you” date.

Pretty much, every time I had extra frosting, I grabbed some tips and just started experimenting.  What looks could I create with different ways of piping?  Throughout the process, I photographed every design with the piping tip so I had a picture for future reference.

 

Piping Tips for Beginners

 

In my mind, I categorize my piping tips into three categories, small, medium, and large (ground breaking taxonomy, I know). Small piping tips are great for adding small details and are frequently used when piping flowers. Some of my favorite small tips are petal tips, leaf tip, small round tip.

Medium tips are great for adding larger design elements to cakes, like rope borders or large rosettes. They can also be very versatile when frosting cupcakes. Some of the most popular medium tips are the 1M, 2D, and 1A.

 

I use large tips exclusively for frosting cupcakes. The Ateco 888 is the absolute goat of cupcake piping, in my opinion. These large piping tips can give you a lot of coverage with minimal effort. Another great option is the Ateco 869.

 

 

Piping Movements

 

Getting different designs out of the same piping tip is simply a matter of your wrist/ hand movements. You can use a 1M piping tip to create a rope border, rosettes, or kisses. It all depends on the motion.

For practice, I like to pipe onto a plate or wax paper.  Try as many different movements you can think of.  Plops, clockwise swirls, counterclockwise swirls, lines, different angles, different positions, and so on.  When you’re done, simply scrape the frosting back into your container and it’s good to use again!

 

Related Reading: FREE Buttercream Course for Beginners

 

Snag Your Freebie

 

If you are a subscriber, you’ll find some awesome freebies in the Resource Library.  One is a mini reference guide for some of the medium piping tips.  The other is my basic vanilla American buttercream recipe that is perfect for beginners!

 

Piping Tip Care

 

It’s important that you take care of your piping tips so that they stay in perfect shape and hygienic. After I’m done piping, I like to rinse my piping tips with hot water to melt away the buttercream. To clean, I use a bottle or straw brush with warm, soapy water. Although I do dry them with a towel, I also let them air dry for several hours before storing them.

For storage, you can find some pretty awesome piping tip cases. I have one that came with my original set. For all my other piping tips, I keep them in plastic take out containers. This keeps them safe, easy to find, and free of any moisture/ humidity.

 

 

Buttercream for Piping

 

Speaking of buttercream, let’s chat.  If you’re a beginner baker, I recommend sticking to an American buttercream, like my vanilla frosting, because it is the easiest.  For piping, you’ll want it to be firm, but not so stiff that you can’t easily squeeze it out of a bag.  I like ABC because it is easy and firm, but it is not as smooth as a meringue based frosting.

There are five different types of buttercream that I use again and again. If you’re ready to expand your buttercream and piping skills, check out my Introduction to Buttercream. This post will break down each variety by method and list the pros/ cons.

 

Watch Me Pipe

 

I love the fun, unique designs you can create on cakes and cupcakes by combining different piping tips.  But, honestly, I don’t always have a plan when I start piping.  I like to fill up my piping bags (fitted with couplers) with different colored frosting and see where the design takes me.

In this video, I’m demonstrating how I “get to know” my piping tips. I’m demonstrating different piping movements with a variety of piping tips. This is something I’ll do with any new tips, or when I’m trying to figure out a design for my cupcakes or cakes.  

 

 

Happy Piping!

 

Now are you feeling a bit more confident that you can handle that big ole set of piping tips? It can be so much fun to just sit down and play with the different designs you can create with them. If you still have questions about piping tips, leave a comment below and I’ll respond!