Kitchen Tools

Pastry tips are great not just for decorating cakes but also for plating mashed potatoes or a creamy meal or dessert.

You can avoid using pastry tips by just simply cutting off the top of a pastry bag and piping your contents out – the final effect will be similar to if you use a round pastry tips. But if you want more shapes, that is when pastry tips come in handy.

There are multiple kinds of pastry tips and you should always select those which fit your preferences.

For example, these are the most common and useful:

• Pain tips (round pastry tips)
• Open Star
• Close Star
• French Star
• Bismark (very good especially for filling pastries since it has a long and sharp end that can penetrate the pastry)

Pastry tips come in 3 major sizes: small, medium, and large. For most households, the most convenient size is small since it is compact and well suited for dessert preparation. Larger sizes are slightly more beneficial for piping out thicker consistencies and/or larger quantities.

Each tip then has an additional number reflecting the size of its’ opening, for example, #5 French star tip, size small.

Best is to purchase a high-quality set of 20 or more pastry tips to have a selection to start with and to also get a cost-effective solution.

Pastry tips can be simply slid into the pastry bag, where you then cut off the pastry bag tip to adjust accordingly. Or you can connect a coupler to the pastry bag to switch pastry tips after the filling is placed into the pastry bag.

Read more about pastry bags here.
Read more about couplers here.
See section “How to Work with a Pastry Bag” here.