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Piping tips for cookies...here are 6 you need to succeed

Piping tips for cookies. When I first started to decorate sugar cookies, I had no idea where to begin with icing nozzles. I didn’t even know what a coupler was. If you are in the same boat you see...

...what is covered on this page:

-what are couplers and how to use them

-6 main piping tips for cookies

-designs each of these nozzles make

-Do I have to buy expensive piping tips for cookies?

I soon realized there were oodles of tips to choose from. At that time, I didn’t even have a business yet. I thought ‘I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on icing tips without knowing their design’.

The video above explains all of that.

Collection of icing tips for decorating sugar cookies.

I scoured online and found some very blurry charts (back in the day, lol). It sort of helped, like with the open stars. I did all I could do…

I bought the main styles to see the results. That very quickly grew because you need the same size and style tip for each color you're doing. Collecting them can be addicting.

Piping tips for cookies. First, couplers

Couplers come in a 2 piece set. One part screws onto the other part with a nozzle between them. You can see how it works in my video above.

You don't always need a coupler though. It's for when you need to change out a different kind of tip, like round to petal. This greatly saves time so you do not have to make an entirely new bag of icing.

If you do not already have them, here is a great price on a 48-pc set. That may sound like more than you need, but believe me, you will sail through them with different colors and royal icing consistencies. Besides, it's a honey of a price and probably one of the cheapest cookie tools in the cookie business:

48-Piece Set of Standard Couplers

9.5/10 WeCookier's Golden Cookie Award!

Check Price

Comes with 48 pieces in a plastic case, is easy to store, and saves space.
Made of durable food-grade material.
Allows you to easily switch tips when using the same color for different decorations.
Gives you more control when decorating.

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6 main piping tips for cookies

As a beginner at sugar cookie decorating, I had no idea how to make professional cookies, let alone how to bake sugar cookies.

The first piece of advice: the best sugar cookie recipe and my superior royal icing recipe. Without those, I would have gone nowhere. It was only through good recipes that my business took off.

When I was a newbie, I mostly used the round tips. All I knew how to do was royal icing flooding and just a couple of cookie decorating techniques. Be sure and grab the Royal Icing Tips download so you don’t succumb to the mistakes I did. This is invaluable for every decorator!

*I offer a great many of my own tips/hacks on this site. If you would like to have extra knowledge coming from a classically trained chef, Jenn Segal on baking tips, visit Once Upon a Chef.

I practiced a little with the petal tip and found how easy roses were to pipe, at least for me.

Of course, you can’t have a rose without leaves, right? Naturally, the leaf tip was a breeze to ‘squeeze’ (haha).

These are the 6 most used icing tips for cookies that come in an array of sizes:

Round--outlining, writing, detailing

Image of a round piping tip for cookies.

Star--swirls, fancy borders, rope design, cactus, main on horses/unicorns

Image of a star tip for decorating cookies. They come in a large array of shapes and sizes. Used for borders, rosettes, starlets, and swirls.

Drop Flower (or closed star tips)--basically a kind of flower

Drop Flower tip, also known as a closed star. The difference between an open star tip is the lines are closer together with a closed flower tip.

Petal (comes in a variety of shapes)--flower piping, swag banner, ruffles

Image of one design of a petal tip. Primarily these are used for flowers and borders.

Leaf (comes in a variety of shapes)--leaves, borders, swags

Image shows leaf piping tips for cookies

Image of a leaf tip. Some call it a bird's beak or 'v' shape. Good for making rose leaves and any other small leaf pattern.

some call this a bird's beak

Multi-tip (comes in a variety of shapes)--grass, graduation tassels, nests, hair, fur

This tip is called a grass tip or multi-tip. These can be used for grass, tassel, spaghetti-look, fur, etc.

The extra-large nozzles are typically used for buttercream cakes and cupcakes. If you are decorating the large floral cookies though, they are used as well.

Extra Large piping tips are used to decorate cakes and cupcakes, typically.

To sum this section up, the most used piping tips for cookies are:

Image of the most common piping tips for cookies.

-round

-star

-leaf

-petal

-drop flower

-multi-tip (special tip)

If you already have these down, a different kind is the Russian tips. They do have mini ones that are perfect piping tips for sugar cookies. Tap this link: Using Russian Piping Tips--and the mini ones!

What designs do these 6 piping tips for cookies make?

Though not all-inclusive in examples,

Round tips—outlining, flooding, drawing lines, making eyes/dots, and writing (sometimes though, I choose to write with edible food color markers).

Star tips—star-looking designs, swirls, and cookie borders. I like to use the star tip when I do unicorn cookies, like this one:

Unicorn cookie using a #16 star tip to create the main.

Or when I make my mini unicorn royal icing transfers like this. (Learn more about royal icing transfer sheets or jump over to get the pdf download here: Unicorn Transfer Sheet)

Petal tips—flowers and borders. They come in a couple of shapes. One is curved, like a crescent moon. That one makes flowers like daisies, marigolds, or mums. The other is a straight diagonal line. Those are perfect for roses.

Leaf tips—these add the finishing touches to flowers, the leaves. They come in several shapes, like the traditional ‘v’ look. I like those the best for roses. Rose leaves are short. The ‘v’ leaf tip is great for making the sunflower too. For those, use the same tip but continue squeezing and pulling to make a long narrow leaf for them. Like this:

Drop flower tips—these tips make piping flowers in a snap. Just touch the surface with the tip and turn while squeezing the bag.

Multi-tips—again, there is more than one design

Mostly, though, it’s the grass tip decorator’s use. Hence, the name. I like to use this tip for graduation tassels or nests for easter cookies with jelly beans.

The beauty is, in these 6 types of piping tips for cookies, the sugar cookie decorating ideas are indeed endless.

All-in-all, what are the most used icing nozzles? Hands down, it would be the round ones. They are so versatile. To make royal icing transfers, for instance, you use the round tips.

Once you become familiar enough with consistencies, you’ll find a lot of times, you don’t need to waste time with couplers and tips. You will just cut the amount you need off the tip of the bag. This makes so much less cleanup.

‘Do I have to buy expensive piping tips for cookies?’…

Where do I buy my piping tips for cookies?

Being the conservative I am, I pick them up at 2 places. 1). Hobby Lobby 2). Country Kitchen Sweetart.com. I personally see no need in buying the $5+ tips. Sure, they are great quality. I just feel like the customer is not going to see the difference at all.

My goal is to give you the best prices to be able to start your sugar cookie decorating business on a budget. Later when your skills develop, perhaps you will want to upgrade. Me, I find it an unnecessary expense. One step cheaper would be plastic tips. However, I find plastic nozzles are prone to leave jagged and uneven icing edges. Often their tips are not smooth.

It seems like this next page has taken forever! I've been working for 2 months on it. There's so many pictures and videos. I'm pretty doggone proud of it and I hope you glean a lot of information from it!

The 3 kinds of Russian piping tips (MINI Nifty Nozzles, large Russian tips, and the large Russian ball tips), Click on this image. There are several video tutorials on using them along with boo koo photos! Here you go...

A thumbnail image that takes you to the page "Russian Piping Tips".

Happy piping!

Top of Piping Tips for Cookies

Click on the thumbnails below to view some popular pages on WeCookiers.com:

Father's Day Cookie Ideas link

Sugar Cookie Decorating Ideas image link

Sugar Cookie Decorating Ideas link

Projector for Cookies link

Best Baking Sheets link

Airbrushing Cookies link

Silk Screen Cookie Decorating image link

Silk Screen Cookie Decorating link

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