About
About Gilt Piping
Gilt Piping is a piped-technique library for cake decorating and sugar craft. It documents piping the way a workshop does: tip numbers, icing stages, colour recipes by weight, curing hours, and the specific fix for the specific failure. It is written and checked by The Sugar Bench, the editorial desk behind the site: cards carry a desk byline rather than a named individual, and no personal credentials are claimed.
Last updated 2026-09-18
Most piping instruction online is written as inspiration - a photograph, a list of vague steps and a note to "practise". What is missing is the information you need at the bench: which tip, how stiff the icing, how long it has to dry, and what to do when a shell collapses on the second pass. Every card here answers those four questions in the order you need them.
How a card is written
Each technique begins as a bench session. The tip is chosen, the icing is taken to a measured stage and tested on the paddle, and the work is piped on a turntable at a room temperature of 18 to 22 C. Only what survives a second and third attempt is written up. Where a technique behaves differently at a different stage, the difference is documented rather than averaged away.
- Tip numbers follow the Wilton and PME sequences, which agree with each other tip for tip.
- Icing stages are named and tested rather than described as "thick" or "thin".
- Colour is given as a ratio by weight of icing, with the toothpick count, because colour is the step most often guessed.
- Curing hours are stated for a room at 18 C, and the page says so, because humidity changes the number.
- Failures are listed as symptom, cause and fix - the three things you actually need when something has gone wrong.
The release schedule
The library holds twenty-four cards and is released in batches rather than all at once, so that each one is checked against the bench before it goes up. A card appears here only when its release date has passed: before that date it is not in any list, not in the A-Z index, not on a tip page and not in the sitemap. Cards are grouped into six families - rosettes, sugar flowers, leaves, borders, lace and fill, filigree and lettering.
Editorial standards
Nothing on this site is sponsored. Tip brands are named because piping instructions are meaningless without them, not because of any arrangement with a manufacturer, and no manufacturer has reviewed or approved any page here. Product links, where they appear, are chosen for the technique and not for a commission.
Food safety
Technique pages describe methods, not formulations that have been tested for allergens, shelf life or food safety in your kitchen. You are responsible for the ingredients you use, for labelling anything you give to someone else, and for checking that your ingredients are safe for the people who will eat them. Where a step carries a specific risk - raw egg white in royal icing, colour dosage, refrigeration and condensation - the card says so explicitly.
Contact
Corrections are welcome and are the fastest way to improve this library. Write to [email protected] with the card name and what you observed at the bench.