The Contemporary Buttercream Bible (9 page)

C

95

This swirl is piped with a French star nozzle in the

same way as described above, but with the piping

bag and nozzle held vertically above the cupcake.

96

Open star nozzle (Wilton 1M)

97

Closed star nozzle (Wilton 2D)

98

French nozzle

99

Simple round nozzle

100

Piping Textures and

Patterns

Piping buttercream is the essential skill to learn if you want to use this delicious decorating medium

on your cakes. Strangely it’s often mistakenly

thought to be difficult, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In this chapter we’ll show you how

to create amazing effects, from ruffles to

basketweave, using some really easy techniques, all

achieved with a humble piping bag and a handful of

nozzles.

101

102

Ruffles

Ruffles are such an easy and effective technique for

creating elegant cakes and can be achieved using

various different piping motions – back and forth,

up and down and zigzag. All can be done quickly

and each will create a slightly different effect. In the Back and Forth Ruffles project, we’ve given the

technique a little twist with zigzag panels of ruffles and ombre shading. You’ll see how to create a

striped two-tone effect in the Up and Down Ruffles

tutorial, and how a wiggle plus a squeeze makes a

squiggle in the Squiggly Ruffles tutorial.

Back and Forth Ruffles

1 Cover your cake with thin layer of buttercream, as

described in the Buttercream Basics chapter. The

surface does not necessarily have to be smooth, as it will be covered by the ruffles (A).

103

A

2 Using a side scraper or ruler, measure and mark

equal sized narrow triangles around the surface of

the cake (B). If you are using alternate colours for

your ruffles, make sure you divide the cake into an

equal rather than odd number of triangles.

104

B

3 Place your chosen colour of buttercream in a

piping bag with small petal nozzle (Wilton 104).

Begin at the bottom and hold the piping bag

vertically with the wide part of the nozzle against

the cake. Continuously squeeze the bag in an

ascending and back and forth motion, filling the

marked triangles (C).

105

C

4 As you work your way up the cake, change piping

bag to the next shade of buttercream to achieve the

gradient effect (D). Make sure you follow the marks

on the cake and keep the pressure constant to avoid

wavy ruffles.

106

D

5 Change piping bag to the next shade of

buttercream and continue working up to the top of

the cake making your ruffles smaller and smaller as

you reach the tip of the triangle (E).

107

E

6 Change piping bag and start the next panel of

ruffles, this time starting with the smallest ruffles at the base of the cake and working upwards

increasing the width following the marks on the

cake. For contrast with the gradient ruffles we have