Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi Pandabear1997

If you search in youtube ‘Royal Icing and Piping methods’ you will see several videos by Elaine McGregor. These videos can help you understand piping techniques as a starter. Elaine McGregor is an excellent teacher and has several books on the subject. A good place to buy Royal Icing books is Amazon, just a couple of very basic books which you could read and get a few ideas from and to practice. Some colleges offer evening adult education classes in sugarcraft to learn basic piping techniques. I would advise you to get piping nozzels only for projects you are thinking of doing as there are so many. The most basic nozzel you will definitely need will be the writing tubes. I have both PME and Wilton nozzels, plus when I was first learning I bought various cheaper versions to practice the different designs, these are not much good for serious work as the definition isn’t very good, however, good enough to practice with. David Brice has as answer on this site about piping courses, if you put in the search box ‘pipeing courses’ (this spelling). I haven’t heard whether there has been further progress on his answer, however, if you are interested in a course with the site it might be worth emailing [email protected] and ask if a course may be forthcoming. Piping techniques take a long time to perfect but with a good teacher, a steady hand and your own enthusiasm, there is no reason why you can’t quickly put your learning into achieving an acceptable standard of work. I hope some of this information helps, and please do write to David, he will be able to give you lots of advice. Good luck. x

I should also have mentioned that you can google Sugarcraft Guild for your local area. They will display a timetable for monthly meetings. Apart from learning piping and other sugarcraft techniques they will be ble to help with a host of other information such as cheap liability insurance, shows and suppliers.