In this advanced piping techniques page, I am going to talk about the advanced forms of piped cake decorations. These techniques are those that go beyond the basic piping techniques.
By advanced piping techniques, I mean mixing and matching the basic piped designs as well as using those techniques to create elaborate designs and gravity-defying patterns. Some of these advanced techniques include the Lambeth method, Oriental Stringwork, and Australian Stringwork.
If you are new to piped cake decorations I would recommend that you learn and practice the basic piped cake decorations first, before moving on to the advanced piping techniques on this page.
As recommended in my basic piped cake decorations page, the best way to learn and master the art of piping would be to watch someone doing it. And then you go on to practice it yourself. You can join a local cake decorating class or enroll in an online cake decorating class.
Jump to:
- The Best Online Platform to Learn Piped Cake Decorations
- Piping Buttercream Borders
- Learning the Lambeth Method, Wendy Kromer
- Elevating Oriental Stringwork, with Toba Garrett
- Mark Seaman: Mastering Australian Stringwork (Cake Decorating)
- The Best Way to Practice Advanced Piped Cake Decorations
- ❤️More tutorials you will love
The Best Online Platform to Learn Piped Cake Decorations
Craftsy is an awesome platform to learn cake decorating, particularly these advanced piping skills. Each class covers a specific skill so you get to pick and choose the skills you would like to learn.
Classes are all conducted by experts in their own niche. And you know you are getting tips and advice for the best in the industry. Once you enroll in a class, you get to watch it online as many times as you like, wherever and whenever you want.
Below are online classes that teach specific advanced piping techniques:
Piping Buttercream Borders
In this cake decorating techniques class, award-winning cake artist Roland Winbeckler teaches how to make the perfect buttercream for decorating, how to make your own parchment piping bags, and tint your icing right in the bag. You will learn to pipe shells, swags, scrolls, rosettes, drop strings, and ombre ruffles. This is an excellent class to learn how you can use these advanced piping techniques to create flawless designs on your cakes.
Learning the Lambeth Method, Wendy Kromer
Lambeth method cake decorating is a traditional cake decorating technique which uses the elegant over-piping techniques to create intricate designs on cakes. In this video, instructor Wendy Kromer uses 3 modern projects to teach 12 Lambeth border constructions. She also provides professional advice for designing, pricing, and transporting Lambeth-style cakes. The Lambeth method is not widely taught nowadays. And this video is a great source to master this elegant art of advanced piping techniques.
Elevating Oriental Stringwork, with Toba Garrett
This video by the master decorator Toba Garrett is all about advanced piping techniques. The focus is on gravity-defying stringwork piping. She starts with an introduction to royal icing. And goes on to teach how to cover your cakes with royal icing and how to pipe the gorgeous Oriental stringwork. She also teaches trellis piping and a piped ornament. Toba finishes the video with tips for transporting this kind of delicately decorated cakes. This video is a great extension for anyone who wishes to further master their piping cake decorating techniques.
Mark Seaman: Mastering Australian Stringwork (Cake Decorating)
Learn the art of impressive Australian Stringwork with this video by award winning cake artist Mark Seaman. Here, he guides you through the process of creating perfect Australian Stringwork. This includes bridgeless extensions of royal icing that appear to float right off the cake. Mark starts by teaching how to make royal icing most appropriate for Australian Stringwork. He then goes on to teach all the details of piping perfect Australian Stringwork. He completes the video by sharing tips on to price this highly time-consuming cake art and how to transport your cakes safely.
The Best Way to Practice Advanced Piped Cake Decorations
Now that you know where to get the lessons from, the next step would be to practice what you have learned. As in the practice of basic piping skills, you can use the Wilton 406-1075 Decorate Smart Deluxe Practice Board Set or the Wilton 406-9464 Practice Board Set as a guide particularly for stringwork.
As a personal preference, I use a styrofoam cake dummy covered in fondant as a practice board to practice these techniques. And I like to use royal icing as compared to buttercream because royal icing can be scraped off the fondant and does not leave any grease stains. Plus, the cake dummy gives the closest-to-real-cake experience when practicing these skills.
Hope you find this page useful.
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