I was wondering if cream cheese frosting can be colored easily? Is there anything special I need to know? I am making a red velvet cake with cream cheese/butter frosting for this Saturday, which I have never made before.

I was supposed to be making a black cake with flames on it, that was before I decided on the red velvet. I was going to make a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting, then color that black and add fondant flames and a red border maybe.

Thanks for any help you can offer. Life here is crazy as we just took in my father-in-law a few days ago. He is recovering from heart surgery and cannot care for himself. The nursing home we took him to was disgusting & hideous, we turned around and just brought him home instead. I am sorry to ask rather than search, but I really do appreciate your help in getting this info (I usually try to search the old posts, but time is short now and I am exhausted).

THANK YOU!!

You should be fine using regular gel icing colors, such as wilton or americolor.

I hope your FIL recovers soon.

I always make the crusting cream cheese icing. It can be colored without getting too runny. The straight butter, cream cheese icing to me is too soft to try and decorated with, the crusting type does flowers and borders nicely. I use it even on wedding cakes. As with some colors like black, I would maybe add a little cocoa powder to the crusting cream cheese to get chocolate first, then add a little black, you will not have to add so much coloring and perhaps get it too runny. Just a suggestion. The crusting recipe is in the recipe section.

I have a few cakes on here that I used regular Wilton gel colors with, no problems at all the cream cheese frosting:
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1290576
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1167278

Thank you!!!

I used the Cake Man Raven recipe, and it was super soft and melted pretty quickly (everyone loved the taste though), so I was not able to pipe anything. I decided not to use black as there was already so much food coloring in the cake itself (1oz-an entire bottle!), so I just left the base frosting the natural color. I was able to color some frosting though and it worked out nicely. I did red and yellow, then used a pointy tipped spatula to frost up the sides of the cake. It looked like flames and my brother-in-law was thrilled. I'm sorry I can't attach my sad little picture.

I appreciate all of your help! I didn't have time to experiment/practice, but I wanted this to look nice because we have all had such a stressful 45 days. Thanks again!