Help help! Just mixing it up and I have about an hour and a half before I have to go pick up my son, so I'm trying to get this cake finished ... hpow much do I need to thin out my RI to get it to pipe easily for cornelli lace, but to where it won't run off of the sides of the cake when I do? Thanks!

It should be soft peak stage for piping

I couldn't even tell you what to look for in the consistency. I know it needs to fairly loose to pipe with but it still needs to hold its shape well. If you can easily stir it with a spatula and it still holds a peak, you should be fine. If you're using a fine tip like #1 or #2, you want it looser than if you're using say a #4 tip too. I'm sorry I couldn't be much help. one other thing too, you want to be able to pipe it easily without killing your hand to squeeze it out. If it's too hard to squeeze out, then you want to loosen it up a bit. I don't know if that helps much though?

Yes, definitely, this helped, thank you! I'm sorry I didn't post right away, my hands were covered in sugar and I was in a tearing hurry, but "killing my hands" was right there for a bit . All better now. Thanks again!

-Emi.