Spring Cupcakes and Ateco Decorating Tips

It's Spring!!
Or rather it is officially Spring Day here in the Southern Hemisphere ; )

However - apologies in advance if I sound like a party-pooper - I'm not too sure that as a baker I should be celebrating the arrival of this season...

Spring means that my kitchen gets invaded by bugs. And I'm not talking about ones like these....

I'm talking about the kind that go on suicide missions into my syrup, and try to annex my sugar - one crystal at a time.

Spring means 6 weeks of drizzle and mist that turns fondant into goo.

Spring means humidity that makes royal icing a royal pain to work with.

Spring means melting meringue.

Spring means stress.

Have I ruined it for you? Sorry!!

But if I take the time to step out of my kitchen and look at the world, yes - spring is here, and it's pretty glorious : )

So, I'm going to celebrate with a bit of spring-cleaning.

It's time to get stuck into that decorating equipment drawer (ahem... room) and get it organized.

It's said that if you have something in your cupboard that you haven't worn in a year, throw it out. Now, you've probably got icing nozzles in your cupboard that you haven't used in a year (or ever??), but I'm not going to tell you throw to them out.
I'm going to suggest that you use them!
First, though, you need to figure out what they're for, right?! One way to do it is to make up a batch of icing, and just play around, experiment and see what you can create.
(That's why an adaptor/ coupler in your piping bag is so handy - you can swop nozzles without having a dozen different bags)

Standard Ateco Adaptors

Or you can refer to the manual : )

So here's a handy guide from Ateco of what their various nozzles/ decorating tips can do:

I hope that you find that helpful.

Clockwise from top - nozzles used were Ateco 104, 852, 80

Happy Spring (cleaning!)

: )

xxM