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Piping tips for cookies...here are 6 you need to succeed
Piping tips for cookies. When I first started to decorate sugar cookies, I had no idea where to begin with icing nozzles. I didn’t even know what a coupler was. If you are in the same boat you see...
...what is covered on this page:
-what are couplers and how to use them
-6 main piping tips for cookies
-designs each of these nozzles make
-Do I have to buy expensive piping tips for cookies?
I soon realized there were oodles of tips to choose from. At that time, I didn’t even have a business yet. I thought ‘I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on icing tips without knowing their design’.
The video above explains all of that.
I scoured online and found some very blurry charts (back in the day, lol). It sort of helped, like with the open stars. I did all I could do…
I bought the main styles to see the results. That very quickly grew because you need the same size and style tip for each color you're doing. Collecting them can be addicting.
Piping tips for cookies. First, couplers
Couplers come in a 2 piece set. One part screws onto the other part with a nozzle between them. You can see how it works in my video above.
You don't always need a coupler though. It's for when you need to change out a different kind of tip, like round to petal. This greatly saves time so you do not have to make an entirely new bag of icing.
If you do not already have them, here is a great price on a 48-pc set. That may sound like more than you need, but believe me, you will sail through them with different colors and royal icing consistencies. Besides, it's a honey of a price and probably one of the cheapest cookie tools in the cookie business:
- Come with 48 pieces set in a plastic case, easy to store and save space.
- Made of durable food grade rubber.
- Preventing from shifting or slipping out of the bag.
- Allows you to easily switch tips when using the same color for different decorations.
- Gives you more control when decorating.
6 main piping tips for cookies
As a beginner at sugar cookie decorating, I had no idea how to make professional cookies, let alone how to bake sugar cookies.
The first piece of advice: the best sugar cookie recipe and my superior royal icing recipe. Without those, I would have gone nowhere. It was only through good recipes that my business took off.
When I was a newbie, I mostly used the round tips. All I knew how to do was royal icing flooding and just a couple of cookie decorating techniques. Be sure and grab the Royal Icing Tips download so you don’t succumb to the mistakes I did. This is invaluable for every decorator!
*I offer a great many of my own tips/hacks on this site. If you would like to have extra knowledge coming from a classically trained chef, Jenn Segal on baking tips, visit Once Upon a Chef.
I practiced a little with the petal tip and found how easy roses were to pipe, at least for me.
Of course, you can’t have a rose without leaves, right? Naturally, the leaf tip was a breeze to ‘squeeze’ (haha).
These are the 6 most used icing tips for cookies that come in an array of sizes:
Round--outlining, writing, detailing
Star--swirls, fancy borders, rope design, cactus, main on horses/unicorns
Drop Flower (or closed star tips)--basically a kind of flower
Petal (comes in a variety of shapes)--flower piping, swag banner, ruffles
Leaf (comes in a variety of shapes)--leaves, borders, swags
some call this a bird's beak
Multi-tip (comes in a variety of shapes)--grass, graduation tassels, nests, hair, fur
The extra-large nozzles are typically used for buttercream cakes and cupcakes. If you are decorating the large floral cookies though, they are used as well.
To sum this section up, the most used piping tips for cookies are:
-round
-star
-leaf
-petal
-drop flower
-multi-tip (special tip)
If you already have these down, a different kind is the Russian tips. They do have mini ones that are perfect piping tips for sugar cookies. Tap this link: Using Russian Piping Tips--and the mini ones!
What designs do these 6 piping tips for cookies make?
Though not all-inclusive in examples,
Round tips—outlining, flooding, drawing lines, making eyes/dots, and writing (sometimes though, I choose to write with edible food color markers).
Star tips—star-looking designs, swirls, and cookie borders. I like to use the star tip when I do unicorn cookies, like this one:
Or when I make my mini unicorn royal icing transfers like this. (Learn more about royal icing transfer sheets or jump over to get the pdf download here: Unicorn Transfer Sheet)
Petal tips—flowers and borders. They come in a couple of shapes. One is curved, like a crescent moon. That one makes flowers like daisies, marigolds, or mums. The other is a straight diagonal line. Those are perfect for roses.
Leaf tips—these add the finishing touches to flowers, the leaves. They come in several shapes, like the traditional ‘v’ look. I like those the best for roses. Rose leaves are short. The ‘v’ leaf tip is great for making the sunflower too. For those, use the same tip but continue squeezing and pulling to make a long narrow leaf for them. Like this:
Drop flower tips—these tips make piping flowers in a snap. Just touch the surface with the tip and turn while squeezing the bag.
Multi-tips—again, there is more than one design
Mostly, though, it’s the grass tip decorator’s use. Hence, the name. I like to use this tip for graduation tassels or nests for easter cookies with jelly beans.
The beauty is, in these 6 types of piping tips for cookies, the sugar cookie decorating ideas are indeed endless.
All-in-all, what are the most used icing nozzles? Hands down, it would be the round ones. They are so versatile. To make royal icing transfers, for instance, you use the round tips.
Once you become familiar enough with consistencies, you’ll find a lot of times, you don’t need to waste time with couplers and tips. You will just cut the amount you need off the tip of the bag. This makes so much less cleanup.
‘Do I have to buy expensive piping tips for cookies?’…
Where do I buy my piping tips for cookies?
Being the conservative I am, I pick them up at 2 places. 1). Hobby Lobby 2). Country Kitchen Sweetart.com. I personally see no need in buying the $5+ tips. Sure, they are great quality. I just feel like the customer is not going to see the difference at all.
My goal is to give you the best prices to be able to start your sugar cookie decorating business on a budget. Later when your skills develop, perhaps you will want to upgrade. Me, I find it an unnecessary expense. One step cheaper would be plastic tips. However, I find plastic nozzles are prone to leave jagged and uneven icing edges. Often their tips are not smooth.
It seems like this next page has taken forever! I've been working for 2 months on it. There's so many pictures and videos. I'm pretty doggone proud of it and I hope you glean a lot of information from it!
The 3 kinds of Russian piping tips (MINI Nifty Nozzles, large Russian tips, and the large Russian ball tips), Click on this image. There are several video tutorials on using them along with boo koo photos! Here you go...
Happy piping!
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