Icing Questions

maggie111

I love making cakes, baking them decorating them etc so I've just bought some new icing bags.

I know butter cream icing, and I know royal icing... Anyone have a recipe of what's best to put into the icing bag to give a good effect? I wonder if butter cream might be too grainy?

Any advice would be lovely, thanks!!

celyn90

Butter cream pipes really well and shouldn't be grainy - the art is to beat seven shades out of it with an electric whisk until it goes slightly paler - this takes much longer than people realise If you sift the icing sugar, it will stop it clumping.

It will depend on your icing nozzles and what you want to do with them. Glace icing and melted chocolate can be piped for lettering and filligree work through a thin nozzle, but is no good for large swirls where you need something thicker for example.

maggie111

Aww fantastic, thanks so much for your post!!!

Completely forgot about glace icing. I expect most of the use will be icing simple designs onto cakes and writing happy birthday and things. I'm so excited to start using it!!

celyn90

They are great fun One bit of advice I learnt the hard way was never fill them more than about a 1/3rd full - it makes them much easier to handle and much less messy.

If you are doing lettering or things you can lift to put on a cake (like chocolate lace for example), you can draw it on the underside of greaseproof paper and pipe over it - it's good for practicing simple shapes When I started out I spent ages tracing over copies from an old fashioned handwriting book - effectively learning to write again

maggie111

Celyn, thanks for the tips!! Saw a wonderful thing on the Martha Stewart website about tracing a monogram *searches*

Can't find it, but basically using the same techniques you could make a gorgeous monogrammed cake.

Didn't think of doing it for ordinary "happy birthday" etc - thanks!

celyn90

If you want to do lettering directly onto a cake, try drawing the outline of the design on greaseproof paper, laying it on the cake then pricking over the outline throught the paper with a pin - when you take away the paper, you will be left with the outline in pin pricks on the surface, which yu can pipe over - that is one way of getting the lettering straight

maggie111

Aww, thanks very much Celyn - you're all lovely on this board

maggie111

Just to give you an update,

I made cupcakes at the weekend using whipped buttercream icing. Whipping it made the texture SO different!!! And they looked great.

Thanks again Celyn!!