Cake Icing Tips

The icing tips that you use will be the main tool that you use to create icing decorations so you should know a bit about the different types of cake icing tips that are out there. You should have at least a few tips of each style in your kitchen all the time.  There are many manufacturers that sell cake decorating tips in sets so that you can buy a wide range of sizes and styles of tips at the same time.

The Most Basic Kinds of Cake Icing Tips Are:

Drop Flower Tips

Drop flower tips look very similar to star tips but you can tell the drop flower tips from the star tips because the drop flower tips are larger and the bits on the end bend inward toward the center in a flower shape.  Drop flowers are the flowers that lay on the sides of cakes, and the drop flower tip can be used to make a flower border on the top of the cake or to create flowers on the sides of the cake.

Round Tips

Round tips are made in a variety of sizes. Round tips are used for a lot of general purpose Wilton Method cake decorating and are used for writing, making stems, or making flower bases.

Rose Tips

Rose tips also come in several sizes and are used to make vines and the petals of roses and other flowers.

Leaf Tips

Leaf tips are used for making leaves and sometimes flowering vine decorations on a cake.

The Wilton Method of cake decorating is the only type that uses tubes and tips for decorating. Both the Lambeth Method and the Australian Method use pastry bags for decorating because both of those styles use royal icing, which is more liquid like.

The Wilton Method uses Buttercream icing, which is thicker and stiffer so decorators use tubes and tips to decorate with Buttercream.