5 Must-Have Piping Tips for Baking Beginners

Let’s talk about Piping Tips! There are so many out there, and you may be wondering which ones you need to get started in cake decorating today. Here are the top 5 must-have piping tips for beginners!

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Decorating Tip #21

This is a star shaped tip. You can create all of these wonderful techniques just by adjusting your hand position. Left to right, stars, rosettes, zig zags, shells, ropes, and reverse shells. The #21 tip is my personal favorite because of how versatile it is!

Decorating Tip #12

 This is a round tip. Depending on how you position your hand, you can create dots which are shown at the top, or pulled dots which are shown at the bottom with the #12 tip.

Decorating Tip #3

Like tip #12, this is a round tip. However, it's much smaller. The most common technique that the #3 tip is used for is writing. You can also create smaller dots as shown on the bottom, and then in the middle we have a small bead border.

Decorating Tip #104

This tip is also referred to as a petal tip. The end of this decorating tip is shaped like a teardrop. This allows us to create beautiful ruffles, and also a lot of different flowers. At the top we have a Zinnia and a Rose, and then we have ruffles at the bottom. These were all piped with decorating tip #104.

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Decorating Tip #1M

This decorating tip is much larger than our other tips. You can use this one tip to pipe the entire top of a cupcake. Below is a comparison of a #1M rosette versus a #1M swirl.

The 1M rosette uses less icing, so it’s best for someone who isn't a big fan of icing. The 1M Swirl is more typical atop of a cupcake or an ice cream cone, where a lot more icing is used.

BONUS: Decorating Tip #2D

The #2D tip is quite large, very much like #1M tip. You can create beautiful drop flowers with this tip. Here are two different styles: The top one is a swirl flower, and the flower underneath is a star flower.