OodleTip & Little OodleDoodle Bags: Pastry Bags for the Rest of Us

Item: OodleTip & Little OodleDoodle Decorating Bags
Price: $9.99
Overall Impression: A very convenient and helpful tool for those of us who don’t have aspirations to semi-professional cake decoration.

I love pastry bags. No, I don’t decorate cakes — in fact, if you’ve paid attention to the cakes I’ve shared here, you’ve probably noticed their decidedly rustic appearance. But I do like to squirt rosettes onto a cake here and there, and beyond that, pastry bags are good for so many things: Filling muffin cups with batter, topping desserts with pretty swirls of whipped cream, portioning butterscotch pudding into 600 bite-sized samples (OK, maybe that one is just me!).

A pastry bag is a very handy thing to have around, and these OodleTip bags take it to the next level. Want to see what’s so special about them?

Characteristics and Specs: Here’s what makes OodleTips brilliant: These bags have the tip attached! No fumbling with couplers and finding the right pastry tip. Just cut the plastic tip into the size of opening that you want, and away you go.

For people who work with pastry and cakes every day, the classic pastry bag is a wonderful invention, giving almost infinite control over their results. But for ordinary people like myself, who don’t need professional detail, the pastry bag setup is a little more involved than I would like. I have a washable pastry bag that is cut at the bottom to accommodate really big tips. I usually screw the tip on with a coupler, and I can never seem to find the tip I want. I have to use a different bag if I want a small, fine pastry tip. I also don’t like having to buy new tips when I want a different size or finish

The OodleTip bag, on the other hand, is ready to go much more quickly. I fill the bag (since the tip is closed nothing oozes out until I’m ready). Then I snip the tip into the size that I want.

A bag like this is useful for so many things, from garnishes of whipped cream and piped icing, to more unexpected kitchen tasks, like squeezing stuffing between the leaves of artichokes, or filling deviled eggs and twice-baked potatoes.

Favorite details: The lovely thing about these bags, besides their convenience and adaptability, is that you can decide whether they are disposable or not. At about $1 a bag, I didn’t mind throwing a few out when I was prepping literally thousands of samples for a Bakeless Sweets demo last week. I filled up the bags with pudding or whipped cream, and quickly dolloped out samples and rosettes, tossed the bag, and moved on to the next one. Using a pastry bag made the portioning so much faster, and the result much prettier.

But when I’m not as stretched for time or working in such volume, I clean out the bags and use them again.

Potential problems: These bags aren’t really designed for fine cake decorating at a semi-pro or professional level. When it comes to detail work, their plastic tips are no substitute for the precision of metal tips cut into stars or rosettes. BonNosh is, however, about to release a Commercial OodleTip with a narrower tip designed to give a little more control for fine writing and design. Even so, if you decorate cakes on a weekly basis, or if you aspire to roses and fine scrollwork on the cakes you bake, invest in the classic pro tools like pastry tips and bags.

But if you are a once-in-a-while baker, or someone who likes to use a pastry bag to fill muffin pans or create appetizer bites, then these handy all-in-one bags are a seriously good idea.

Find It! OodleTip Decorating Bags, $9.99 at BonNosh. The OodleTip bags are larger, with a clear tip. The Little OodleDoodle bags are smaller and have multi-colored tips.

Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.