Understanding Piping Tips - The Beginner's Guide!

Piping in a nutshell...

• Start your piping tips collection with a round, an open star and a drop flower piping tip for easy beginner cake decorating 

• Don’t overfill your piping bag - fill it ½ to ⅔ to ensure you can control the flow from the nozzle

• Take our handy quiz to discover the right piping tip for your next project!

Almost every cake decorating project will involve some sort of piping. So, understanding piping tips is an important early lesson in your cake journey! From adding a swirl to a cupcake, to creating buttercream borders and royal icing decorations, every bake can be improved with the right piping tools and equipment. 

Let’s dive in and explore which piping tip does what, why your piping might be failing, and you can complete our quiz to discover what piping tip your next project needs!

Cake Lingo: From online stores to tutorials to social media, you’ll see these tools referred to as piping tips, piping nozzles, icing nozzles or decorating tips. Don’t panic - these are all the same thing!

Jump to

The Best Piping Tips for Beginners
The Visual Guide
Why Your Piping Might Be Failing
QUIZ: Which Piping Tip Do I Need?

The Best Piping Tips for Beginners

When you’re a beginner, you likely won’t be creating the level of intricate decorating a professional cake artist does. So, you can start building your piping tips collection with three key piping tips.

The main 3 tips to start with…

• Round Tip - ideal for creating dots, lines, borders, writing, or piping filling. Start with a Wilton #12.

• Open Star Tip - ideal for creating stars, swirls, shells and more. Start with a Wilton #1M.

• Drop Flower Tip - ideal for creating flowers and swirls. Start with a Wilton #1B.

As you progress, we would recommend investing in two of each - a smaller size and a larger. The larger the nozzle, the wider your piped designs will be! While the smaller the tip, the daintier your designs will be and the more control you’ll have over your piping.

The Visual Guide: What Different Piping Tips Do

The shape of the piping tip you choose has a big impact on the end result of your design! So, before getting started with your project, it's wise to learn a bit about what each of these iconic nozzles does.

• A round piping nozzle is ideal for piping lines, dots, borders, lettering and more. The larger the nozzle, the wider your borders/larger your dots will be.
• A fine line nozzle is the best choice for fine writing and intricate details.
• An open star piping nozzle is perfect for creating stars, shells, swirls and more. Again, the larger the nozzle, the larger your swirl is going to be. 
• A closed star piping nozzle can create shells, stars, swirls and basic flowers with deeper grooves.
• A drop flower nozzle is a great choice for floral designs (and is also handy for swirls and stars).
• A petal nozzle is what you need for roses and petals, ruffles and other floral detail
• A leaf nozzle is (as you may expect!) perfect for creating lifelike leaf shapes
• A ruffle nozzle is perfect for creating ribbons, drapes and statement ruffle designs.
  
• A multi-open nozzle is what you'll need for creating grass, hair or fur texture.
• A basketweave nozzle is great for adding smooth and ribbed stripes and basketweave designs to your bakes.

The Open Star and Closed Star tips are similar - our friend, the amazing Kerry Hemms from @angels_kitchen described the difference as follows: "The closed star tip is more for a classic "rose" swirl, and the open star is for a more "Mr Whippy" swirl!"

Most piping tip shapes can be used to create borders, but the most commonly used nozzles for borders are star and round nozzles.

Why Your Piping Might Be Failing

Like anything else, practice makes perfect when it comes to decorating your cakes! But if you are fairly new to using piping tips, there are a few common mistakes you might be making.

Mistake #1 - Your Buttercream is the wrong texture

In order to achieve beautifully piped borders, cupcake swirls, and decorations, your buttercream must be the right texture. Too hard and it won’t flow through the nozzle. Too soft and it won’t form the shape you’re after.

Solution - Tools down and focus on the buttercream

Put the piping tips aside and spend a bit of time working with your buttercream to get it to that perfect texture. You can add a little milk if it’s too thick, or a little more icing sugar if it’s too runny. We have an entire blog post on how to make the perfect buttercream.

Mistake #2 - You’ve overfilled your piping bag

Find that you’re struggling to get a steady flow of icing, or finding that the bag is slipping out of your hand? You may have overfilled your piping bag. And even the right piping tip can’t save you if that’s the case!

Solution - Half fill or ⅔ fill your piping bag

Filling the bag halfway or ⅔ of the way gives you so much more control! You can properly twist the end of the bag, giving you something solid to hold on to. We’ve created a guide to using piping bags, which you might find handy!

Mistake #3 - Holding the piping tip the wrong distance from the bake

If your design is not turning out how you imagined, you might be holding your piping tip too close to the bake, or too far away. This can result in you either squashing the shape as you pipe, or losing control of the flow of icing.

Solution - be precise in the distance from nozzle to cake

Touch the piping nozzle to the cake and lift slightly up before beginning to pipe. This should give you enough room to successfully pipe your design. You can always have a practice first and scrape it off!

Pro Tip: Always remember to wash your piping tips in warm soapy water and then thoroughly dry them before storing. Storing them while they are still damp is what can cause rusting!

QUIZ: Which Piping Tip Do I Need?

Start building your piping tips collection!

Ready to get piping? We can't wait to see what you create! Shop all of our piping tips and piping bags, and be sure to tag us in your photos. We're at @the_cake_decorating_co, and you can use the hashtag #CakeDecFamous so we never miss a post.

Learn more

Cake Decorating for Beginners
How to Crumb Coat a Cake for Beginners
How to use a Piping Bag - a Step-by-Step Beginner Guide