How to Pipe a Basketweave

Instructions

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1. - Fit decorating bag with basketweave decorating tip 47 and fill 1/2 full or less with medium consistency icing.
2. - Hold the decorating bag at a 45? angle at 6:00, with tip lightly touching the surface of the iced cake and the serrated side of the tip up. Squeeze, allowing icing to attach to surface, then continue squeezing out a vertical strip of icing from the top of the cake to the bottom. Stop squeezing; pull tip away.
3. - With bag at a 45? angle at 3:00, squeeze out short horizontal stripes of icing over the vertical line starting at the top. Spacing between horizontal stripes should be the same as the width of the tip opening; the length for each stripe should be identical.
4. - Squeeze next vertical line over ends of horizontal stripes. Start next set of horizontal stripes by burying the tip under the first (or previous) vertical line.
5. -

   Repeat vertical lines then horizontal stripes, always piping a single vertical line, until you have covered the area with basketweave. Each new set of lines should fit between the previous set.

   Hints:

   Always pipe a single vertical line, then pipe short horizontal stripes.

   Having the cake surface at eye level, on a turntable, makes this technique easier.

   Try using different tips: stars, rounds, serrated side of basketweave tip down or combining two different tips, to vary the woven basket effects.

   If done on the side of a cake, ice the cake first.