Tutorial: Buttercream Basics: Essential Equipment for Beginning Cake Decorators

This may be the longest title ever, but these are, in my opinion, the equipment you will need if you are interested in cake decorating and want to try piping.

The first one: piping bags. This one is a disposable piping bag. Piping bags are triangular shaped bags used to hold buttercream for piping. You can buy disposable piping bags by the 100's for reasonable prices.

 This is a reusable piping bag. It should have an opening the right size for your coupler that usually comes with a set, but in my opinion, these are not strictly necessary. However, you will need either disposable or reusable piping bags if you want to pipe.

 An off-set spatula. I'm showing two different ones. You won't necessarily need two, but you will need one for sure. The off-set angle allows you to smooth the buttercream on the top of a cake without dragging your hand or the handle of your spatula through it. 

 Of course, you will need some piping tips. I'm going to go through several sizes and shapes I use very often, so they go on my short list of necessary ones. The first ones, round tips. At least one small, one medium and one large. There are different things you can pipe with round tips. I use a small round tip to write words on a cake, I use a medium round tip to pipe centers of flowers or small petals and I use a large round tip to pipe petals around the sides of a cake.

 Of course, no list of piping tips would be complete without a decent selection of star tips. Here there are large, medium and small, open and closed star tips. Star tips make beautiful borders, can be used to cover a cake, make rosettes, even basketweave. Yep. These are probably the most useful tips you will ever buy.

 These are a couple different sizes of leaf tips. If you ever pipe flowers, which you probably will if you want to pipe, you'll want some leaves surrounding the flowers.

 Of course, if you'll be piping flowers, you'll want a couple of petal tips. These can be used to pipe roses, daisies, ruffles or ripple borders. Very useful.

 This one I'll throw in because I love it, although it's not strictly necessary. This is a basketweave tip. One side is flat for a flat basketweave and the other is ribbed for a textures basketweave.

 And another one I use for various different things: a grass tip. This can be used to pipe grass, fur for an animal or monster, or even tassels. Although it's not included in piping tip sets very often, it's worth going out and buying by itself.

 So here's a visual on all the tips I consider essential. Most of them can be found in a standard set of piping tips. Sets are pretty affordable in general.

 It might be obvious, but you're going to want a rubber spatula. There's nothing better for scraping buttercream off of the sides of bowls or to put it into piping bags.

A turntable. A turntable is a cake decorator's best friend. It will help you to evenly pipe around a round cake.

So, generally, you don't need tons of equipment to learn to pipe. If you decide to go for it, it can be really fun as long as you have a bit of patience.

Watch us talk about these essentials on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/EWWw5T6XMtw
Schaut zu wie wir über diese Essentiellen auf YouTube reden hier: https://youtu.be/8tYrVVii7uE