How to Use a Coupler and Piping Tips

Hi, everyone. I'm Rachael Teufel, the owner of Intricate Icings Cake Design in Denver. And I'm here to share a handful of my tips and tricks with you on how to use those couplers and piping tips in your piping bags. Let's head into the kitchen and see how this all works together. I want to show you today how to use a piping bag along with either just a tip or using couplers. Now, there's a lot of styles of piping bags out there. This one happens to be a plastic single-use disposable bag. It's my favorite because I don't have to wash it like a cloth bag. And they're just really, they're comfortable, they're soft, they're easy to use, and there's lots of different brands out there, and they're available on pretty much any store. There are a few different sizes. They've got some larger bags and some smaller bags. So if you're doing really fine piping or smaller borders, then I have a tendency to use a smaller bag. If I'm piping a lot of cupcakes, for instance, putting tops on cupcakes, then I use a larger bag just so I don't have to fill the bag as many times. I do recommend using this just one time with your icing. You can obviously refill your bag multiple times throughout that use for whatever project you're doing, but I don't recommend emptying out the icing and cleaning the bag, for instance. You're just gonna use it, and when it's done, empty the icing out, take the tip out, and you're ready to go. So there's a couple ways that you can use a plastic piping bag. You can either do it just with a regular tip, and all you need to do is drop that tip into your bag. You want to scooch it as far down into the bag as you can. And that's gonna kind of give you the judge of where then to cut. So you don't want to cut too far forward because then your bag is what's creating the shape of your icing. But if you cut way up here, the hole of the bag is too large, and any pressure that you apply to your bag could potentially make that tip slide out. So I have a tendency to do about one third, to like, one quarter or one third of my way into the tip itself. And then, I just score it a little bit with my scissors, and you can push the tip just back out a little bit. And now I know exactly where I need to cut in order to make that tip work. And then you just scoot your tip right back in, and give a little tug on it, just so that as you're starting to work with your bag and putting buttercream in it, that this tip doesn't fall back inside of the bag. So that's how you can use this bag without a coupler. Now, if you're going to be changing in between multiple tips using the same color of icing, then I do highly recommend using a coupler. And the coupler is basically just a plastic piece that's gonna sit inside of your bag. Again, push it all the way down until you can't squeeze it down anymore. And then the judgment for cutting this is I just tend to go about halfway between the first ridge and the end of the coupler. And again, that's just to make sure that I don't end up with my tips or my couplers falling out. And so I'm just gonna crease it just a little bit, so I know where to go with my scissors and then cut straight across. Oops, I didn't cut very well there. Squeeze the coupler back down to the end of the bag. And now you can put any of your tips on here with your coupler cap and all you need to do is just screw that right over the top of the bag. Now, this serves two purposes. It keeps both your tip on, but it also kind of keeps your bag secured to the coupler. And now you're able to go ahead and pipe with this tip, and then you can just remove the cap and swap out any other tip that you would like. So you could start with a round, and go to a star, and then go to a rose tip, whatever you'd like to do, if you're piping in the same color in your bag. And that is how you use piping bags with a tip, or with a coupler and a tip. Now that you can see how the piping bag works along with either a coupler or just a tip, go ahead and try a few different types of bags and styles and see which one you prefer. Next up, I want to show you how to fill up those bags so you can type your heart out.