Tips for piping icing letters on a cake

[Swaliswan]

Please can you share with me any top tips you have for piping a message/name on a cake. I'm trying to decide on what to do for DS's christening cake and wonder if I could be brave and pipe his name onto the cake. I guess that I will need to practice first but I would love any tips that you have.

TIA

I buy chocolate letters in Sainsburys

What are you using? Chocolate or royal icing?

Make sure that the consistency of the icing is not too runny or too stiff.

When you start to pipe, the nozzle should be touching the surface of the cake and lift only slightly whilst piping a line, at the end, the nozzle should touch the surface again and lifted quickly to ensure a clean finish.

I think that I might not try to be so brave and use the FMM tappits instead this time. I don't want to muck up DS's christening cake! I'll have a practice and do some piping another time.

Do you have a 'The Works' shop near you? They had a great icing set in a box the other day for about £3. It included a lettering set where you slotted letters into a frame to make the word you want, then 'print' it onto the icing. This gives you a nice outline to pipe over.

One tip is to start from the middle rather than the left hand side, so start for the middle of the word in the middle of the cake and work outwards.

That way you get nice even lettering.

Don't do it, go with the Tappits, they're far easier and give a much nicer finish. Nothing ruins a cake more surely than wonky, wobbly writing!

I was given the tip of writing it out with a cocktail stick on the top of the cake first. Suppose then you can play about with spacing and just follow the lines you have drawn.

I was going to say use the blunt end of a fork or chopstick the to ever so slightly indent the letters you want, and then go over it with piped icing. The indentation should be gentle enough that it won't notice if you go wrong, but enough to trace over.

Thanks for all of your tips. I will definitely go with the tappits this time but I do hope to do some piping in the future. It's my dad's 60th and my brother's 30th this year so plenty of cakes to make!