What is piping jelly?

What is piping jelly?

Piping jelly is an incredibly useful product for the cake decorator.  It is made from sugar, water, a gelling agent and preservative; it is clear and has a sweet though neutral flavour.   Piping jelly is suitable for vegetarians, vegans and coeliacs.  At Confection Perfection we use it for all sorts of things!

Novelty effects

You can add colour (the Sugarflair paste colours work very well) to piping jelly.  For example, to create a range of novelty effects add blue for water, brown for mud or tea, red for jam, orange for volcano lava or green for Halloween slime. Place the piping jelly on your work surface, add a little colour using a cocktail stick and then ‘paddle’ it through with a palette knife.  ‘Paddle’ means to work the jelly – keep it in the smallest area you can whilst squashing it with the palette knife to remove any small lumps and air bubbles.  Keep going until the colour is evenly blended.

Stained glass

This is such a pretty technique.  You can use it to create small individual designs such as flowers or use it to create larger pictures.  Pipe an outline in royal icing with a 1.5 or 2 nozzle.  You can either pipe in a colour or once the outline is dry paint it with an edible metallic paint.

Place your coloured piping jelly in a piping bag with a number 2 nozzle.  Squeeze into the areas you would like filled in.

Icing a cake board

Piping jelly is the best thing to secure sugar paste to a cake board.  Paint the board with piping jelly (I use a silicon pastry brush) – you don’t need a lot of piping jelly but it does need to cover the whole board.  Knead your sugar paste, roll it out and lay over your board.  ‘Iron’ with a smoother and then trim any excess paste.  Piping jelly is much more effective than water – your sugar paste won’t be sliding all over the place!

Marzipanning a fruit cake

Use piping jelly instead of apricot glaze for sticking marzipan to a fruit cake.  Piping jelly is cleaner and quicker (no boiling and sieving) – it is ready to use straight from the tub.

Icing a cupcake or cookie with sugar paste

Paint the top of your cupcake (or cookie) with piping jelly (this seals the cupcake, keeping it fresh inside).  Roll out your sugar paste, cut out a disc or corresponding cookie shape and place on the top.

We love to see your cake creations so do please send us pictures of your piping jelly creations.

Annabelle

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