Cleaning and storing decorating equipment

Decorating equipment fails in three ways: tips get dented, bags go mouldy, and turntables get sugar in the bearing. All three are avoidable, and the routine takes ten minutes.

Deal with tips immediately

Buttercream and royal icing both set hard inside a tip, and once set they are extremely difficult to remove from a fine slot.

Drop used tips straight into hot soapy water. If you are mid-project and cannot wash them, at least get them into water — dry icing in a leaf tip is a job with a pin.

To clean: soak, then work a narrow brush through from the wide end towards the point. Never push anything hard through from the point; the aperture is the working part and a distorted aperture pipes a distorted shape for the rest of its life.

Rinse thoroughly. Icing sugar residue attracts moisture and stains stainless steel.

Drying tips

Dry immediately and completely. Stainless steel spots if left wet, and the seam is where corrosion starts on cheaper tips.

Stand them point-up on a cloth so water runs out rather than pooling inside.

Storing tips so they survive

A dented tip is finished. The one thing that dents tips is being kept loose in a drawer with everything else.

A compartment box, one tip per space, numbers visible, is the answer. If a kit came with a moulded tray, that tray is designed for shop display and will not survive weekly use.

Keep the pattern chart with the box.

Reusable bags

Two rules and they are both about drying.

Wash inside and out with hot soapy water immediately, paying attention to the point where grease collects. Then turn the bag inside out and hang it to dry completely.

A bag that is dry outside and damp inside grows mould at the seam, and once that has happened the bag is done. This is the most common way a reusable bag dies.

Chocolate and ganache are the hardest to remove from fabric — use a disposable bag for those and keep the fabric ones for buttercream.

Couplers

Two parts, and the thread is where icing hides. Unscrew, wash both halves separately, dry, and store assembled so the two halves stay together. A coupler ring without its inner part is useless and they separate in a drawer.

Turntables

The bearing is the part that matters and usually cannot be dismantled. Sugar or buttercream that gets into it turns a free-spinning turntable into a stiff one, permanently.

Wipe rather than submerge. Clean the plate and the base, keep water away from the centre, and dry it straight away. Never in a dishwasher unless the manufacturer explicitly says so.

Store flat and horizontal — not on edge, and not with things stacked on the plate.

Spatulas and scrapers

These are the easy ones: hot soapy water, and most are dishwasher safe.

Store scrapers flat. A metal scraper stored leaning in a crowded drawer bends, and a bent scraper cannot produce a flat side however good the technique.

Check the working edge occasionally by laying it against a flat surface and looking for light underneath.

Fondant tools

Fondant dries hard and fast. Wash tools immediately, and dry them completely before they go away — moulds in particular hold water in the detail.

Store moulds flat and unstacked; a silicone mould that has been stored folded keeps the fold.

Where everything should live

Ideally one box with the whole kit in it. The single biggest reason a decorating kit stops getting used is that its parts are in four places and finding them is a job in itself.

Tips in a compartment box, bags flat, couplers assembled, spatulas and scrapers flat, turntable on the shelf below. Somewhere dry, because icing sugar residue and humidity together will corrode cheaper tips.

When to replace something

• A tip — when the aperture is dented or an edge is bent. It cannot be corrected.
• A reusable bag — at the first sign of mould at the seam, or when the coating starts to separate.
• A scraper — when the edge is no longer straight.
• A turntable — when the rotation is no longer smooth, which usually means the bearing.

On the shelf

Individual tips, bags and couplers to replace what has worn out are on the piping bags and tips page. Scrapers, spatulas and levellers are under icing tools and spatulas, turntables at turntables and stands, and complete sets at complete decorating kits.