I love the show and the cakes they make is amazing. I posted this in the spanish forum, figured i'll post here too. This is good to know as a newbie to cakes.
To make red, start with adding yellow to your BC, mix well.
Then add orange to it, mix well again. at this point the icing will still be light in color. Mix in your red color to it and make sure you mix that well too. That should give you a very bright red. Hope this helps someone out there. I know that wilton carries a "no taste" red... but how much do you need to add to get that red?
I have only had a problem with the Wilton black. I kept adding to make sure it was dark enough for my panda cake and it ended up tasting bitter (the BC).

Kat

wow -- thanks for the tip!

Cool!! Thanks

Thanks!

Cool- Ill try this next time!

thanks so much for the tip. When you add so much red or black it tastes really bad.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

Theresa

For black, if I'm able I use a chocolate BC, then color black. Also, once you mix your red or black, cover and let sit for a while and the color will bloom, and darken. I also will use powdered color and gel color both, this seems to help.

i use the super red from coutry kitchen it works really good

Hey, thanks for this valuable tip!!

I've used an Americolor red and had to use a lot then threw away what I had because it was such a pukey color. I went with pink instead.

I'll use this tip when I make red next time. It's these little tips that seem biggest to me.

Thanks for the tip! I currently have a bunch of Wilton colors but am using my Americolors more then my Wilton lol. If I don't have the color I need in the Americolors I use the Wiltons. On my WWE cake I had to have Red Red for the Logo, I used my Americolor and it took more then I thought it would to tint just a very small amount of icing. It may be because the icing was super light white hardly had any tint of yellowish to it at all (used real butter instead of margarine lol) but I had to use a good 5 - 6 squirts of color to get red... and about 7 squirts to turn my Chocolate BC black for the sides and then said to heck with it and used Wilton tube icing in black for the logo... big mistake tasted like crap!!! Never use that stuff ever ever ever!!! All 25 tubs of stuff I had (some Wilton some Cake Mate) all went in the trash that day lol nasty nasty stuff lol

you are all welcome!! i have gotten wonderful tips here, so it's nice to have something to share too.
I have both types of colors, wilton and Americolor! i use americolor the most right now. But like someone mentioned above, i've put a lot and still not red the way i want. this one a bit of yellow, bit of orange and some red and waalah! i just did this for the baseball cupcakes i have in my photos. super happy doing it this way.
I have done black the way it was suggested above too. unfortunately i was new and didn't know any better back then. Thankfully i came across this site and have learn so many wonderful tips!

I use americolor and swear by it ... the episode of ace of cakes that I watched when they were talking about doing yellow then orange then red it was airbrushed onto fondant ... does this work the same way with buttercream?

it did for me!

Wow can't wait to try this , yellow then orange then red. Last time I did red I took the CC tip and did pink first and that helped lots, maybe this way is even better................................

this tip is so well timed for me!! I am making a very large elmo cake this weekend and I have been nervous all week about the red...thanks!!!!!

Does anyone have any tricks on how to kill the bitter taste of red or hot pink?

thanks for the tip.

Thanks for the great tip!

"Does anyone have any tricks on how to kill the bitter taste of red or hot pink?"

i think the bitter taste comes from adding too much food coloring! i have only had this happen to me with wilton colors, not with Americolor. That's why it's good to mix a few colors first, then add the color you are trying to get - instead of adding a whole bunch of the color you want. (does that make sense?!)

Has anybody tried this yet? Why do you think you make yellow first before orange?

save

i just tried this and it did not work for me i got a peach color i put half of my x-mas red and holiday red which were the small bottol of Americolor and the no taste-red from wilton and still got a peach color. so as for me it did not work. now i got a color that i did not need. for the cake i am doing... but i gave it a try. i guess it might work for others but not for me....

shaddi

Thanks for the tip! I tried it last night and it worked. I did have to put in a bit more red because I had a red-orange color, which wasn't bad either but I wanted to get red. I have to take a look at my roses later to see if the colors darken more.

Thanks for sharing this tip!! I was just looking up the best way to make red because I want to do a 4th of July cake, and this way sounds perfect!

Can't wait to try this. Do you think it will work with fondant too?