Wilton Squeeze Bottle, a Great Decorating Tool for Food

Hubby is the chef in the family and of course, once word is out about special interests everything he receives for Xmas and Birthdays is chef oriented . He's had his share of cooking lessons, has subscriptions to Gourmet, Cuccina Italiana, Food and half dozen other cooking magazines and an amazing amount of cooking utensils.He has large mixers, hand mixers, every pot and pan a top chef might use. A super item we found for them is the Wilton Squeeze Bottle. It's an opaque plastic dispenser with a pointed end capped in red.The medium is about 6" high. The tip is meant to be cut to suit your needs. You can cut it on the slant or straight.It is multi purpose item and very inexpensive. We've even found them in dollar type stores and found no difference in the quality. They are the type of bottle you sometimes see as ketchup and mustard dispensers only these are opaque. Now, my daughter married another cheffie. So we double shop and the guys get together and cook up fabulous creations for us. The guys like to make special sauces and do nouvelle cuisine designs as presentation on their dishes.These are a perfect size for a stocking stuffer gift.

You can also go online to the Wilton Online Store to find all the different sizes available. They come in mini, small and medium as well as large.

Oddly enough, I have a fire extinguisher that is called Flame Out. It comes in the exact squeeze bottle as the ones we use for decorating and saucing. It a dry chemical professional fire fighting formula that stops small fires, another use for this plastic squeeze botte container.I keep this right in the cabinet under my indoor grill area.

My daughter and I get together and do crafty baking with the Grand kids. These squeeze bottles are great for the kids when they do the icing. They have much more control and it makes cookie or Ginger bread House decorating much easier and neater. The Wilton squeeze bottle makes writing on cookies or cakes more controllable. If you're baking on your own these are handy to use to create an edge when using Royal icing on your cookies. A trick I learned watching Martha, she has a name for this trick which I can't remember, possibly flooding, where you draw an edge with the icing and thenfill it in, thus preventing it from running over the edge of your cookie.

If you use colored icing you may experience some staining in your bottles. The same goes for your sauces. I do not recommend cleaning them in the dishwasher although I have without any problem I'm just more comfortable hand washing these bottles. I also suggest avoiding microwaving them. I always have a concern about plastic and microwves. If you're trying to keep chocolate melted just keep the squeeze bottles in a pot of hot water in between uses.If you want to put cream in the center of a cupcake, cut the hole abit wider and push the tip into the center of the cupcake and squeeze. Presto, your cupcake has a cream center!

A super birthday idea for the squeeze bottle is to fill it with melted chocolate and then write the name of the birthday person around the edge of the plate you're serving the cake on. This can also translate into writing any message you want on a plate. i.e. I Love You for Valentine's Day breakfast in bed..

These squeeze bottles can be found at craft stores like AC Moore, Ragg Shop or Michael's and I've even found some at garage sales. We go to a Restaurant Warehouse near us and pick them up in quantity there as well. You have to be a card carrying member there. The price is really so affordable I only do this when we're doing a big shopping. With the AC Moore or Michael's 40% off and 50% off coupons it really isn't a must to go to Big Buy shops. I've found a mini version as well as the medium size in Beauty Supply Stores since it's a great tool for applying dye to your roots.

Of course, I use a few of these for dispensing when I do crafts, glue, glitter (very good for controlling glitter), scrapbooking for glue or glitter dispensing or making your own glitter glue and using this as the dispenser. If held correctly it will "pouf" out your product so I use it for poufing iridescent glitter on my design when I face paint.

The squeeze bottle would be great to include in a gift basket for a crafter or cheffie.

So, for everything from cooking to crafts to beauty it's a handy item to have and very affordable as well as making a great gift for anyone with a craft interest or love of cooking .