Hi! I'm Emily of British Girl Bakes and I'm going to show you eight ways to use my
favorite piping tip, a 1M star tip. I'll start with probably my favorite way
to use a 1M tip, by piping easy roses onto a cake. For each rose hold your tip
against the side of the cake and pipe a tight spiral, working your way out and
then releasing your pressure on the piping bag as you pull the bag away from
the cake. Start at the bottom and pipe a row of roses around the cake and then
another row on top and then another row. I like to pipe each rose in between the
two below so that they're slightly offset. You need a thin coat of frosting
on the cake first, partly because it provides a flat, non crumbly surface for
your roses to stick to but also because if there are any gaps between your roses
it won't be as noticeable when there's frosting underneath instead of naked
cake. This is a really quick and easy way to cover a cake with decorative frosting
and the color possibilities are endless - you can use just one color or pipe the
roses on by alternating colors or you can make it ombre by using a light shade
of the color for the first row and then get darker as you work your way up or
down the cake. When you finish the sides you can leave the top as it is or you
can pipe roses on top as well. Then if there are any gaps in between
the roses you can squeeze a bit of frosting out of the piping bag, still
using the 1M tip to pipe little star blossoms.
Another way to frost a cake using a 1M tip is to pipe frosting in rows around
the cake. You'll need piping bags for every color of frosting unless you want
to wash the bag in between each color. Build your cake and give it a crumb coat
and then I like to start at the top of the cake and work my way down for this
one to make sure the join between the top and the sides of the cake is neat.
Pip a rose onto the top by starting in the middle and spiraling outwards until
you've covered the entire top surface of the cake.
Then around the sides, hold your tip against the cake and spin the cake,
holding your hands still which will ensure your frosting is piped in a
straight line. You can change colors as you go down the cake if you want or use
the same color for the whole cake and you can either start piping in the same
place for each row and where frosting starts and ends it will cause a little
seam which can then be the back of your cake, or you can start in a different
place for each row and by the time you've piped all of the rows of frosting,
the seams in different places around the cake won't be noticeable anymore.
The 1M tip is a useful one to use for texture, like the fur or hair on an
animal cake. For this dog cake I've carved the cake and given it a crumb
coat of frosting and I've piped the collar onto the neck
before I do the fur. With my 1M tip I'm squeezing just enough frosting out of
the bag to make a little star of frosting and doing this all over the
cake, changing colors to make some of the fur white and some brown. On its own a
single squeeze of frosting through the 1m tip looks like a star but when you
cover a cake with it, it looks like shaggy fur or hair which
is perfect with dog cakes or any other animal with slightly shaggy fur. This is
also a fun way to create texture on any other cake, not necessarily an animal
cake.
A nice way to add some detail to the top of your cake is to pipe frosting around
the top. These are wiggles or ruffles of frosting
using a 1M tip, holding the tip just above the cake and as you lift the bag
up slowly, applying pressure the whole time, wiggle your wrist back and forth
slightly to make the frosting fold over itself to make these pretty ruffles. You
can place things in-between the ruffles like macarons or cookies or truffles or
candies. To space them out evenly it's easiest to place the macarons or other
decorations first, and you can attach them with just a tiny bit of frosting,
and then pipe the ruffles in between them afterwards.
You can alternate colors if you like.
Another way to pipe frosting on top of the cake is to paint little swirls,
the same as you would pipe onto a cupcake but smaller. Hold your 1M tip in
the center of wherever you want the swirl to be and pipe a spiral, lifting
your bag slowly as you pipe so that the spiral layers on top of itself. I'm
spacing the swirls around the cake by imagining that the cake is a clock and
piping the swirls at opposites, so 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock, 9 o'clock and 3
o'clock, and then another swirl in the middle of each.
You can use a single color or alternate bags with different colors of frosting
inside or blend a few colors together inside the piping bag. I go over this in
a lot more detail in my online course on The Basics Of Cake and you can click the
link in the screen for more information or I've put the link in the description
below.
A final fun border for the top of your cake is a rope border which you can pipe
with little overlapping circles of frosting. I'm going around the outer edge
of the cake and when I get to the end of each circle I'm immediately pulling the
piping bag towards me to start the next circle which is overlapping half of the
previous circle and continuing all the way around the cake, finishing with a
complete circle and then adding some sprinkles on top.
For the base of the cake you can use your 1M tip to pipe this wave-like
border to cover up the join of the cake and the cake board. Hold your piping bag
vertically and squeeze the frosting out as you move your wrist away from you and
then pull it back towards you to finish the wave. Release your pressure on the
bag for a moment and then as you pipe the next wave, moving the bag away from
you, start squeezing the bag again to push out more frosting. This is a nice
way to add some detail at the bottom of the cake. If you're going to put
something on top of your cake like macarons or sugar art or chocolate
shapes or other decorations, a fun way to attach them is to pipe frosting onto the
top with your 1M tip and then while the frosting is still sticky, press the
decorations into it. You can do the wiggles or ruffles that we just covered
or swirls and when the frosting sets after about 30 minutes at room
temperature or 15 minutes in the fridge it will secure the decorations in place
on top of your cake so you can move it around without worrying about the
decorations falling over or falling off the cake.
I hope you've seen a fun new technique to try! Please tag @britishgirlbakes in
your photos on Facebook and Instagram if you try any of these so I can see what
you make! Thanks for watching! I share a new cake decorating tutorial
every week and to make sure you don't miss one, click the red subscribe button!