Pastry Bags

A pastry bag is essential for decorating cakes and cookies with frosting. If you are new to cake decorating, you’ll find it is easy to improvise a pastry bag by using a plastic food storage bag—just cut off one corner, insert a decorating tip through the hole, fill, and pipe. Once you have decorated a birthday cake or two, you will likely upgrade to reusable pastry bags, which come in various sizes and are plastic-lined for easy hand-washing.

If the reusable pastry bag is new, cut the end off with a pair of scissors so the base of the tip will stick about ½ inch through the opening. Start by cutting just a little bit (if you cut too much the bag is ruined), testing the hole with the tip until the cut is just the right size. Push the tip into the end of the bag.