Piping Hearts with Tip #8

You may recall, I'm a big fan of piping hearts with Tip #353, which pretty much pipes hearts and nothing else. However, that tip is a bit hard to find and I think it's a good idea to know how to pipe hearts with a round tip, which you can find anywhere. I wanted to make some tiny hearts to trim the stacked cake I made in the Wilton Tall Cakes class, so here's what I came up with. First, tape a sheet of parchment paper to a cookie sheet. Then, load a pastry bag with a #8 tip (or larger or smaller, depending on your project) and a healthy dose of royal icing (this color, by the way, is Electric Pink by AmeriColor). Start each heart by piping a ball at slightly less than a perpendicular angle to the cookie sheet with the tip just above the sheet:

Once you've piped a ball, increase the angle, decrease the pressure, and pull out a tail:

Repeat the process, coming at the heart from the other side:

Keep your dusting pouch full of powdered sugar and cornstarch handy. Touch your fingers to it if need be to pinch the "tails" into a more defined heart-shape.

You might also want to tap the center of the heart so the divot between the two piped halves is less defined:

Allow the hearts to dry for a few hours. Remove them from the parchment paper either with an offset spatula or by peeling the paper away from them (or a combination of both).

Use them to decorate anything. I used them to break up all the white icing on this cake with a shot of color and shape (I piped beads of royal icing on their backs to "glue" them in place). Now if only I could figure out how to write tiny little sayings on them…