Some cake decorating tips and supplies are essential for those new to the craft while others can be added slowly to your cake decorating kit over time. Cake decorating tips are considered essential items by many professional cake decorators regardless of your current skill level.

Metal cake decorating tips are
better than plastic.

Fancy cake decorations and trimmings including stars, flowers, vines, and frills are all created using a variety of cake decorating tips. There are literally dozens of cake decorating tips to choose from. You definitely want to buy nickel-plated or metal tips—not the plastic ones.

Each tip is assigned a number according to its size and the type of design it creates. An assortment of round tips in a variety of sizes is good for starters. These round tips will help you with a variety of projects including dots, balls, beads, lace, strings, outlining shapes and writing letters. These round cake decorating tips are #1-10, 1 being the smallest size and 10 the largest.

The following cake decorating tips are also essential for beginners:

Star Tips: 16, 18, 21, 32
Basket Weaving: 48
Leaf Tips: 67, 352
Petal Tips: 102, 103, 104, 125

Instead of buying each tip individually, you can also purchase sets that include an assortment of tips. Most cake decorating tips cost in the neighborhood of $1. So if you start with a smaller tip set you can always add more tips later.

Wilton offers a deluxe tip set which contains 26 metal decorating tips and a master tip set which contains 52 cake decorating tips.

An important investment that only costs $1.00 is a tip cleaning brush. You’ll save yourself from going crazy trying to clean every little bit of frosting from the tip using only running water. You can also buy a mesh dishwasher bag for super-easy cleaning.

Tags: cake decorating supplies, cake decorating tips, cake decorating tools