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Save time, reduce waste and prevent messes by using couplers in your piping bags
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Here are four reasons you need them for cake decorating. First of all, what is a coupler? It's a little piece of plastic that goes inside a piping bag
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and then you put the piping tip onto the outside, screwing it on with the ring that comes with the
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coupler. The coupler holds the tip in place, it means you can put it on and remove it from the
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outside of the bag instead of having to drop it in through the top of the bag. Why use couplers
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The first reason is to be able to use several different piping tips with just one piping bag
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of coloured frosting. Using some Christmas cakes as examples, I'm using this red frosting with a
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star-shaped piping tip first for writing and then I can just unscrew the coupler ring, take the star
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tip off, replace it with a small round piping tip and screw the coupler ring back on to secure it
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Now I can achieve a different style of lettering and also pipe details like this reindeer's nose
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and I can change again from this round tip to a petal tip to pipe a ribbon and a bow on a gift
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box cake and then change to a leaf tip to pipe the petals of a poinsettia flower. I've used just one
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bag of coloured frosting with four different piping tips without needing to change piping
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bags each time. I teach how to make all of these Christmas cakes in another YouTube tutorial and
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the link is at the top of the screen and in the video description. The second reason for using
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couplers is to be able to use one piping tip with several bags of frosting. For this string of
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Christmas lights, I'm using just one small round piping tip but I'm switching it between bags so
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that I can make multi-coloured lights. After each colour, just unscrew the coupler ring, lift the
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piping tip off, put it onto a coupler on a different piping bag and screw it on. You could wash and dry
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the piping tip in between colours or you can just squeeze the old colour through the tip into a bowl
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until the new colour comes through and then pipe onto the cake. By using couplers, instead of having
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to squeeze the frosting out of the piping bag to reach the tip and take it out to use in a different
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bag, you can take the piping tip off from the outside of the bag which is much quicker. If you
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have a few piping tips, you've probably got some standard sized ones like a 1M star tip and some
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smaller ones like a petal tip or an open star tip. When you cut the end of a piping bag to fit a
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standard sized tip like this 1M, it fits snugly and pipes perfectly until you try to use the same
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bag for any of your smaller tips. The smaller tips will fall straight through or even worse, they'll
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fit at first but with a bit of pressure on the piping bag, they'll pop out while you're in the
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middle of decorating, making a mess or worst case scenario, exploding onto your cake and ruining
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the decorating. The solution? Couplers! If your piping bag is cut to fit a standard sized tip
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when you want to use the smaller tip in it, just drop a coupler into the bag first
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attach the smaller tip to the outside, screw it on and voila! The last reason for using couplers
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is for reusing frosting. When you finish with a piping bag, you could squeeze the frosting out
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through that tiny piping tip hole which takes forever or if you're using a coupler, just take
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the piping tip off and squeeze the frosting through the much bigger coupler hole instead
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Much quicker! Now you can store the leftover frosting in the fridge for two weeks or the
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freezer for two months or you can reuse leftover buttercream by recolouring it. I hope these tips
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have been useful! Check out my online course, The Basics of Buttercream, where I teach how to make
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the perfect buttercream, how to flavour and colour it, use it for piping and for perfectly smooth
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frosting on cakes and how to achieve all sorts of unique cake decorating techniques. Go to my
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cake school on www.britishgirlbakes.com and join my club plus for access to every master course
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mini course, live workshop and five minute Fridays. The link is at the top of the screen
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and in the video description. Thanks for watching
