I am working on an over the hill cake for tomorrow and so far it seems like a disaster! First, I had fire in my oven from over-filled pans and now the icing that is supposed to be black looks kinda purple. I started a day in advance on the color so it would have time to set, but is there hope that this will change to black? I am coloring a whole batch of BC, so it's a lot. I added brown first and then the black. Is there anything I can do, or am I doomed to failure on this batch and need to just redo??

Please help!

i noticed also that the icing looks a little "separated" for some reason and that you can see a lot of red...probably from the brown? anyway, any hope for this?

I always make my icing chocolate before tinting black by using coco powder then it is easier.

Try taking a small sample and adding purple's opposite in the color spectrum = yellow. You may have to play aroung with the ratio, but it should work! Let me know how it goes.

i would have added chocolate, but the customer wants vanilla buttercream.

I'll give the yellow a try.

any other tips out there??

yellow didn't do anything. i added more black and now it looks black, except for weird red flecks. I've never seen icing do this. it's like the red separates itself out. Should I try adding blue/green (red's opposites)?

Have you let the icing sit yet? Personally before I started adding more things to it, I'd let it sit for an hour to see what happens. I have had a small amount of dark gray turn black in a 15 mins before.

Also the red is probably from the black coloring. They mix colors to make black.