What Is the Correct Way to Ice a Cupcake With a Piping Bag?

A piping bag is the most versatile tool in a cake decorator's arsenal, provided you know how to use it properly. The tool has several components, and assembling those pieces intimidates many novice decorators. Preparing a piping bag of icing or frosting requires minimal time, however. Once your bag is ready for action you can begin honing your application technique. There are two basic piping applications for cupcake decorating; both of them are straightforward and become routine with minutes of practice. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Filling the Piping Bag

Cut 1 inch off the narrow end of the piping bag with large scissors or kitchen shears.

Twist the ends of a coupler to unscrew the two pieces. You will then have a ring and a cone-shaped piece.

Insert the cone-shaped piece, narrow end first, into the piping bag. Push it down to the narrow opening of the bag. The coupler should be protruding from the opening in the bag about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch.

Slide the wide end of a decorative piping tip onto the protruding coupler. Slide the coupler ring onto the decorative tip. Screw it onto the coupler to secure the tip to the bag. Using a coupler enables you to remove a decorative tip from the bag to vary icing patterns or colors.

Scoop prepared icing into a piping bag liner with a spatula or large spoon. Fill no more than three-fourths of the bag.

Twist the liner above the icing to keep the contents from squeezing out while you work. Trim the closed tip of the liner with scissors to allow icing out of it.

Insert the narrow end of the filled liner into the piping bag. Ensure the tip of the liner reaches into the coupler at the end of the bag. Twist the piping bag in the same position you twisted the liner.

Piping a Continuous Swirl

Hold the tip of the piping bag 1/8 inch from the top surface of the cupcake. Position the tip at the outer edge of the cake.

Squeeze the bag gently to pipe icing out of it. Move the bag in a circle above the cupcake to outline the top outer edge in icing.

Move the bag in a continuous circular motion to spiral the icing toward the center of the cupcake.

Lift the piping bag as you reach the center of the cupcake to start building the design vertically.

Release the hand that is squeezing the icing out once the center peak is about 1 1/2 to 2 inches tall. Continue lifting the bag straight up as you stop squeezing. This finishes the icing peak with a point.

Piping Shaped Beads

Hold the tip of the piping bag directly to the top surface of the cupcake. Position the tip in the center of the cake.

Squeeze the bag gently to pipe out the icing. Pipe a pea-sized bead of icing onto the cupcake.

Release the hand that is squeezing the bag as soon as the pea-sized dollop is on the cupcake. Lift the bag as you squeeze and release to give a tapered finish to the bead of icing. The finished shape should be 1/8 to 1/4 inch high and as wide as the opening in the decorative tip.

Hold the tip of the piping bag to the top surface of the cupcake immediately next to the short icing design you just piped.

Apply short, shaped beads of icing across the entire surface of the cupcake, working outward from the center.

Tips

- Unscrew the coupler ring, remove the first decorative tip and place a different decorative tip on the bag to change the pattern of one icing color while you work. Unscrew the coupler ring, remove the decorative tip and place it on a different piping bag with its own coupler to make one icing pattern in multiple colors while you work.

How to Bake Messages Into Cupcakes

Send a secret message in the sweetest way possible – baked into a cupcake. It might sound like something from a movie, but you can write a message and hide it in the batter of a cake before baking. The secret to the method is the type of paper you choose. Plain writing paper can get soggy in the batter, and wax paper is difficult to write on, but heat- and moisture-resistant parchment paper can withstand both the batter and the heat of the oven. Look for it in the paper goods section of grocery stores. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Cut parchment paper with scissors into 12 strips.

Write your message on each parchment paper strip with a pen. Let the message dry to the touch. Use nontoxic pens and touch the message to ensure the ink has fully dried. Avoid permanent marker ink.

Prepare the cupcake batter per your favorite recipe or box mix. Preheat the oven as directed by your recipe.

Place cupcake liners into a muffin pan and fill each liner halfway with batter.

Fold each parchment paper strip in half with the message on the inside at least twice so the strip is about 1 inch on each side. Keeping the message on the inside of the folded paper will help to prevent the ink from bleeding into the batter.

Bury each folded strip into the batter of each cupcake liner.

Add more batter to each cupcake liner so they are two-thirds full and the parchment paper strips are completely hidden under the batter.

Bake and cool the cupcakes as directed by the recipe.

Warning

- Warn your guests before biting into the cupcakes that there is something inside the treats.

Cupcake Coloring Craft

Colorful cupcake crafts can work double-duty as sweet party treats as well as table decor. Use frosting to add a vibrant touch to the cupcakes and have kids decorate them with festive designs to match any special occasion. Supply children with a variety of edible decor items and encourage them to use their imaginations when enhancing the cupcakes. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Halloween Cupcake Crafts

If you're hosting a children's Halloween bash, create a batch of spooky cupcakes. Tint white frosting using food coloring, or buy pre-colored icing for convenience. Use orange and black frosting to create creepy jack-o'-lantern-inspired cupcakes. Green frosting will come in handy for Frankenstein-themed cupcakes, and you can decorate the tops of dark purple-frosted cupcakes with plastic spiders or pieces of candy corn.

Christmas Cupcake Crafts

Celebrate the holiday season by making Christmas cupcake crafts with your kids. Use a variety of small, edible treats to make festive baked goods. Transform the tops of white-frosted cupcakes into ornament-inspired crafts by sprinkling them with red and green decorator's sugar. Use green frosting and a pastry bag to pipe Christmas tree shapes onto the cupcakes as another option. Decorate the trees with small red cinnamon candies or shiny silver or gold dragees.

Flower Cupcake Crafts

Enhance a garden-themed birthday party or baby or wedding shower with flower-inspired cupcake crafts. Pipe frosting in vibrant colors such as pink, orange and yellow onto the mini cakes to create petaled flower designs. As another idea, top the cupcakes with white frosting and transform colorful gumdrops into flower patterns. Use small chocolate candies as the flowers' centers and create stems with green icing.

Critter Cupcake Crafts

Kids can create whimsical critter faces on the cupcakes using a rainbow of frosting colors. Top the cupcakes with red frosting and use brown or black icing to create dots for ladybug-inspired edible crafts. Use pink frosting for a pig and green for a frog theme. Kids can make facial features with small marshmallows, cookie bits, icing or licorice pieces.

What Do I Need to Bake Cupcakes?

Baking cupcakes at home requires access to only a few key tools. Learn about what you need to bake cupcakes with help from a cupcake artist and baker in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Audrey Hermes, owner of Frost Me Gourmet Cupcakes in San Diego, California. Today, I'm going to be telling you what you need to make cupcakes from home. You'll need your favorite cupcake recipe. This can be for cake or cupcakes as long as you can put it into a cupcake pan. You'll need all of your ingredients, electric mixer, handheld or countertop, mixing bowl, spatula. Your measuring spoons and measuring cups. A flour sifter, your pan and oven mitt. A cooling rack for your cupcakes when they're finished. A piping bag or a spatula to frost your cupcake with. You cupcake liners. And your decorations. All of these things will help you make your cupcakes from home.

How to Get Sprinkles to Stick on Cupcakes

Getting sprinkles to stick on your frosted cupcakes is something you can do in just a few quick moments. Get sprinkles to stick on cupcakes with help from a cupcake artist and baker in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Audrey Hermes, owner of Frost Me Gourmet Cupcakes in San Diego, California. Today, I will be showing you how to get sprinkles to stick to your frosted cupcakes. You will want to make sure that you put the sprinkles onto the cupcake directly after you pipe or spread the frosting onto the cupcakes. You choose the sprinkles that you would like to place onto your cupcakes. I like to pour some of the sprinkles into my hand. This way I can pinch the sprinkles and directly add them onto the cupcakes where I would like them to be. You'll want to make sure that your cupcakes are freshly frosted when adding the sprinkles because the frosting will be pliable and sticky and that is how you get the sprinkles to stick to your cupcake.

How to Keep Cupcakes Moist With Icing Overnight

Keeping cupcakes moist with icing is all about how you store them before eating. Keep cupcakes moist with icing with help from a cupcake artist and baker in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Audrey Hermes, owner of Frost Me gourmet cupcakes in San Diego, California. Today, I'm going to be telling you how you can keep your cupcakes that are already frosted fresh overnight. If they're already in a pastry box, you can just wrap the entire box with Saran Wrap. You'll want to make sure to get all of the edges covered so no air can get into the box. If the cupcakes are not already in a pastry bag, you can keep them in a airtight container. Remember, if the frosting is made with butter or cream cheese, you'll want to keep them in the refrigerator to keep the food safe. And that is how you can keep your cupcakes fresh with frosting overnight.

How to Prepare Cupcakes

Cupcakes need to be prepared in a very specific way if the end result is going to be even half as good as you hope. Prepare cupcakes the proper way with help from a two-time winner of Food Network's Cupcake Wars in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Arleen from Sweet Arleens here in Westlake Village and today, I have with me Julia, our Executive Pastry Chef. "Hi!" We're going to be baking one of the recipes from the book that we've just contributed to Handstand Kids with of that Gar, Garfield and we've contributed a few different recipes to the book as well as I wrote the forward and we just enjoyed having a book launch here in Westlake Village a few weeks ago. And the carrot walnut is a delicious comfort food great for kids of all ages. So, we've chosen this product to share with you in how to make a cupcake. So, we're going to begin with showing our wet ingredients and our dry ingredients. The combination first that Julia is going to illustrate is a half a cup of dark brown sugar and a half a cup of granulated sugar. Mix with our fat, in this case it's going to be vegetable oil. Pure vegetable oil that we'll be adding, "Three quarters of cup of it", okay, three quarters of a cup. This recipe is so simple. You don't need to have a fancy mixture. You can use a whisk just like Julia is doing or you can put it in your mixture at home. "In fact, it's better than by hand 'cause you don't want air incorporated more than it has to be." Okay. So, next, we'll be adding two eggs and we always put our eggs, we always crack our eggs in a separate container before adding to our mixture. Why? "To make sure there's no egg shells in there." Absolutely. "That's a quick visual." Okay. So, now, we're set to start to add some of our dry ingredients. So, Julia, how much flour are we going to add? "We have one cup of flour, "okay", to start. To spice it up, we have a teaspoon of cinnamon, "oh beautiful", throw in that in there, "absolutely." And then we have a, a teaspoon of salt." Alright, I've got the salt. "And half a teaspoon of baking soda." Okay, and again, all the ingredients are measured out and then they're listed again in the cookbook. "Right." "And this you can all measure together beforehand and then it just goes right into the wet mixture." Okay. And we're going to continue to use our whisk to blend the dry ingredients into our liquids. "Yeah." Hmmm, I can already smell that cinnamon as you're blend, "Absolutely", as you're whisking that Julia. "Yes." Now, as far as the addition for flavor, we've chosen, this is a carrot walnut cake, so we have grated carrots as well as chopped walnuts. You can either buy grated carrots and chopped walnuts already done for you or of course, you can just get your own grater and knife out and take care of both. "Here at the bakery we use a food processor." Right to do, to do all of our carrots, right? "Yes." I always hear that going. "Yeah." Okay. So, with that, we're going to set our whisk aside and switch over to a spoon or spatula. "Awesome. And then, once you have all the wet and dry ingredients, you're just going to fold in the carrots, "okay", and the walnuts. I don't personally like walnuts, so, I can either recommend leaving this out or using pecans." Okay. Or for those with nut-free allergies, again, you can just leave out nuts altogether. Okay, we're going to go ahead and just quickly fold the carrots and walnuts into the batter. We don't want to over mix the batter or we risk it being dry. And then, when we're ready, we're going to go ahead and scoop it out into our cupcake tin. Of course we have really large cupcake tins at the bakery at Sweet Arleens, but we got a home size one here for you today. We want to ensure that we're, that we filled the cupcake liners about halfway full to result in a very even cupcake with room for icing. "To get the perfect portion, we use a number 16 scoop, all scoops have a number and as long as it's full all the way to the top without overflowing, something like that, "hmmm, that looks great", it's going to be perfect." "These carrot ones are a little bit messy 'cause they kind of hang over the side, but guaranteed a delicious, moist product every time." They don't look messy here at all Julia. "Right". Alright, now we've preheated our oven to 350 degrees, it's already heated, ready to go. Julia is going to pop it in the oven and we're going to bake those for about 24 minutes. But again, depending on your own oven at home, it maybe a minute here or there short or over. So, now, we're going to show our baked cupcakes, our baked carrot walnuts and showing those ice and we chose cream cheese icing at the bakery. These are actually a product that we sell here. And oh, those look wonderful Julia. "Yey!" So, making cupcakes is fun, it's easy, it's important to read your recipe thoroughly. But the carrot walnut cupcake is a taste of comfort. Enjoy. "Cheers!"