An advantage of the pastry bag is that it makes it easy to use different metal tips to create a wide variety of designs. Also, a pastry bag holds more icing than a paper cone. This is important when you are decorating with whipped cream or meringue. Buttercream flowers, shell borders, and many other decorations are made with the pastry bag.
Procedure for Filling and Using a Pastry Bag
Fit the desired metal tip into the pastry bag.
If the filling or icing is thin, twist the bag just above the tip and force it into the tip. This prevents the filling from running out of the bag while the bag is being filled.
Turn down the top of the bag into a sort of collar. Slip your hand under this collar and hold the top open with your thumb and forefinger.
Fill the bag half to three-quarters full. Remember that stiff icings are relatively hard to force from the bag, so the bag should be filled less. With meringue and whipped cream, the bag can be fuller.
Turn up the top of the bag again. Gather the loose top together and hold it shut with the thumb and forefinger of your right hand (if you are right-handed).
To force out the icing or cream, squeeze the top of the bag in the palm of your right hand.
Use the fingers of your left hand to lightly guide the tip of the bag, not to squeeze the bottom of the bag. The left hand is sometimes used to hold the item being filled or decorated.
Piping basic shells and shell borders
Simple bulbs, bead borders, and rosettes
Scrolls and borders made with a star tip
Additional scrolls and borders made with a star tip plus, at the bottom, an example of piping with a St-Honoré tip
