Mine seems to always want to come out a nice slate grey or blue color... I'm afraid I'm going to have to use the entire bottle of Americolor to get it jet black and I need to make tuxedo heart cookies this week. ugh...help, guys!

After I mix mine ,I always let it sit for a while...that seems to help deepen the color. HTH

I've read that some people start with a navy blue color one day, then add black a day or two later and then let that sit and get deeper by the day it's needed. Hopefully this will work for you. It's my plan for a project I have coming up in a couple of weeks.

Good Luck!

Instead of blue, I add a little purple to the black. It seems to help. I agree w/ the others about letting it sit for an afternoon. You'd be surprised how much it darkens.

1tsp of black per cup of icing

If the flavor doesn't matter make some cocoa icing then color that black

but for however many cups you will need 1 tsp per


I am sorry this is not americolor.... I am thinking of Wilton color gel....

sorry about that!

powder, powder, powder It mixes well - darkens deeply and is great for impatient people like me. I use chefmaster with good results.

I'm doing tuxedos this week too...Americolor is the only one that works for me and it is MUCH darker when you let it sit for hours after stirring in the colour, yes. Here are some I've done with it....

Antonia--Your cookies are great! I would never have thought you could get such a nice black out of RI. I'll have to try it sometime. (I also thought only BC deepened while sitting, so it's good to know about RI, too.) Thanks for posting!

When I am doing enough black to fill one piping bag I usually only need one big drop to two big drops of americolor and that gets a nice deep black. I am guessing that is for about a cup of royal icing.

I just made up 4 cups of the black icing and it took me about 2 tsp of Americolour Super Black to tint it jet black.

Why thank you!!

Here are the finished cookies from today:

Wow Antonia!!!
Those are amazing!!!

They look great! Are you tinting the RI after you have thinned it? Is the 4c to 2tsp ratio still correct? Thanks

Yes, for accuracy you tint after thinning it....and yes, these were the ones from yesterday and I measured 2 tsp of Americolor Super Black into 4 cups of thinned Antonia74 royal icing

wow helen, those cookies are awesome!!!!!! the detail on the dress is spectacular!

thanks! Now if only i can get a cutter made for those tuxedo suits. That was a PAIN to cut them all by hand!

Antonia, these cookies are so amazing, I'm speechless
your going onto my buddy list! I"m keeping track of your work for sure

If you know you need a lot of black RI and are using meringue powder, substitute black airbrush color in place of the water needed to reconstitute the egg whites. It gave me a true black color when I made santas on candy canes. Also worked well using red airbrush color when mixing up a batch. THT

This may have been said already but I start with red. Red turns into a great dark black.

So did you make the cookies? How did they turn out. I too have to make a bunch of dress and tux cookies in late october for a wedding and I'm a little nervous about the black and white colors bleeding.