Cake Decorating Supplies

Cake Basics: Filling Your Baking Toolbox

Decorating a cake takes practice, patience, and the right tools. Here, we'll guide you through the basic cake decorating supplies, aside from the cake and a bowl of icing; as for practice and patience, well, we can give you only encouragement, so hang in there. Your cakes will be beautiful.

A sharp knife: Use a good knife with a smooth blade to trim and even out the top and sides of your cakes prior to decorating. Try to avoid serrated knives; the teeth can rip into delicate cake.

Spatulas: Both standard rubber and metal offset spatulas will come in handy when smoothing base coats of icing on your cakes. Offset spatulas' metal blades are bent near the handle, making them ideal for smoothing frosting without applying direct pressure to a cake's surface. Small offset spatulas are also excellent for frosting cupcakes.

A turntable: When it comes to smoothing icing, you'll want a turntable. Rotating the cake while holding a spatula directly above it produces the best frosting finish as you can sweep the cake in one continuous motion. Wilton, the leading manufacturer in cake decorating supplies, offers a perfect spinning plate for under $10, though you could splurge for a professional-grade table for about $60.

Pastry bags and accessories: Pastry bags come in a range of materials, sizes, and styles to fit your decorating needs; they also require a few of their own special tools, which we'll detail here.

Washable pastry bags: Lightweight washable pastry bags are made from nylon, cotton, plastic, and canvas and have inner coatings to fight leaks.

Disposable pastry bags: Disposable pastry bags are made from plasticine and are good for one-time cake decorators.

Parchment cones: Also disposable, parchment cones require easy assembly before use; simply roll a triangle of parchment paper into a cone shape and affix a tip.

Tubes and tips: Pastry tips and tubes attach to the decorating end of pastry bags and, because of varied sizes and rim styles, are essential in creating the most recognizable cake designs. Use round tubes for lettering and lines, star tubes for stars and shells, and leaf, petal, and rose tubes for flowers.

Couplers: Meant to be used inside washable pastry bags, couplers consist of a plastic base and ring that allow you to decorate with different tips or tubes without having to use multiple pastry bags.

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