How To Make Black Food Coloring For Icing

To make black food coloring add equal parts of red blue and green food coloring to your recipe.

How to make black food coloring for icing. Simply add black icing color to the chocolate icing using a toothpick or knife. Buttercream icing and fondant are all typically white to begin with and using food dyes to change all of that white to a true black takes a lot of color it s also important to use food coloring gel or paste and not the food coloring liquid. If you re making frosting you can also stir in black cocoa powder until the frosting looks black. Then spread a small amount on a white paper towel or mix the black directly into a little water.

While black food coloring does exist you can make your own black icing using food coloring gel or paste. If it s not dark enough add a couple more drops of each color. Add in some brown food coloring. If the icing is bitter because of the dye try adding cocoa or carob powder to mask the flavor.

Although you could mix your own black it takes a lot of different colors and a lot of food coloring to make such a deep color and all that food color can make your icing bitter and still not be the black you want. Basically you are making a chocolate buttercream with the first two options and adding your black gel food color after. For starters mix two parts blue food coloring to five parts green and three parts red. To make black icing start by making or buying chocolate icing since the brown color means you won t have to use as much black dye to get a dark hue.

There are a few methods for creating black frosting that don t require dye at all. To make black food dye start with a small batch first as exact proportions will vary depending upon what you re trying to tint. Making black royal icing or any dark color can be such a pain. The brand of food coloring may also affect the final tint.

Next mix black gel dye into your icing a few drops at a time until it s the color you want. If flavor isn t an issue i prefer adding in cocoa powder or chocolate. Here are my tips on how to make black royal icing. This will work whether you use liquid gel or paste food coloring.

But if you don t want chocolate then you can opt for the brown food coloring to keep it a vanilla buttercream. Learning how to make black icing isn t hard despite this. First it s important to note that making black food coloring requires a large quantity of color. Adjust if one hue dominates by adding either red or green.

Stir the food coloring into the dish until it s a dark gray color. Combine equal amounts of blue green and red and mix well. Food coloring experts advise making gray by combining one part black and one part blue. It seems as though you need to add a whole bottle of food coloring in order to get the shade you want and that causes all kinds of problems see my ultimate guide to royal icing to read about issues caused by adding too much color.

For small amounts of frosting less than 1 cup if you need less than 1 cup of black frosting for your project we suggest using one of our pre colored black icing pouches or tubes.