Pipe Dreams

Hello Sugar Lovers!

For this weeks blog I decided that I wanted to practice my piping skills. I haven’t been able to successfully create some things while piping icing. Such as flowers or individual objects. I always found it hard to pipe the icing and be able to remove the tip of the piping bag so that it doesn’t look absolutely ridiculous.

So this blog is going to be a bit different just because I really didn’t make anything special. My goal was really just to practice some flowers and leaves. However I did make some box brownies just to have something to put the flowers and leaves on. Let’s get started!

You will need:

• Box brownie mix
• 1 Cup butter
• 3 Cups icing sugar
• 1 Tsp vanilla

*Everything else you should be able to find in your kitchen*

For this project I decided to make my own butter cream icing. First though I decided to make up the brownies and put them in the oven so while they were baking I could practice my piping.

You will need to get out your mixer so you can make the icing. Next add the butter, icing sugar and vanilla. Now when you turn on your mixer its going to look a little……strange. By that I mean it is going to look like you need more liquid in the mix. I promise that you don’t it just takes time to mix it all together. You are going to beat it for at least 5 minutes.

Now I still haven’t gotten it completely right yet. Mine turned out to be a little thick. I could have mixed it longer. The thing I like about buttercream is that its soooo much easier to work with than the jar icing. Now if you don’t want to make your own icing, not to fear. You can also get it at Bulk Barn. Or possibly at a local bulk food place. I should have taken a picture of it but oh look, surprise, surprise I forgot to do that. Some buttercream’s you can practically mold it just with your hands which is much better than the sticky jar stuff.

I dyed one batch purple and the other batch green. I put them in separate piping bags. One with a leaf like tip and one with a flower like tip. I got some new piping bags as well. They are bigger than the ones that I had before. I love them, you can fit a lot more icing in them. Which its great because I hate having to fill them back up when I have run out.

So in order to pipe your flowers and leaves you are going to get a piece of parchment or wax paper and lay it out onto a cookie sheet. Your going to do it that way so you can place them in the fridge in order to harden so you can handle them better. The reason we are doing it on a piece of parchment paper is so that we can make mistakes…..and we will make a lot of mistakes.

When you’re ready you can start with the purple flowers. Now I say flowers but they more look like a nice swirl design. So start off my pushing the icing out of the piping bag slowly and gently swirling it around a few times and pull up to finish the flower off. I had a hard time with this. It may have been because I should have mixed my icing for a little longer but it was kind of hard to detach my pipe bag from the flower without making it look super weird. So just try your best. That’s why we practice people! That’s what great about this blog. If I mess up its all good! Once your done put them in the fridge.

For the leaves I think I messed up a bit more because the icing was thick but also the smallest part of the tip kept getting clogged. This made the leaf split in two. I decided to cut my losses on this one and just try and make a leaf like border around the outside of the brownies.

That’s another thing make sure you check on the brownies! For my brownies I decided to put it in a circle cake pan so it looked a little like a cake.

Once the brownies are done let them cool then you can start decorating it. So I did it a bit differently by putting the border around it. I placed the flowers on top of the brownie. Now I decided to just place them but it would have been a good idea to take a bit of icing and place a small amount on the bottom of each flower so it sticks to the brownie. I placed the whole thing in the fridge but i’m not quite sure if the flowers will stick to the brownie even after you put hat small amount on the bottom of them. Just because of the temperature.

After that your all done! Mine doesn’t look like much but it helped me practice and we all know the more you practice the better you’ll get.

Make sure to like and subscribe so I know you guys like the blogs! As always you can check out my Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/ashleyJ306/ where I post lots of updates. You can also choose to support The Baking Project through my Patreon Account https://www.patreon.com/user?u=13105790.

Happy Baking Everyone!

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Baker