I have a buttercream recipe that I use but I can never get it black. I've tried all the tips I've read: start with chocolate buttercream and use black food coloring gel, let it sit for a bit and it'll get darker with time, add plenty of black food coloring gel....

Is there a way I can get regular white buttercream to be black? Or even red for that matter? It seems no matter how much gel I add to get black instead I get a dark grayish, purple-ish color. Any tips? By the way, I use the Wilton black gel food coloring.

Thanks all!

Try Americolor gels.

Black Because it takes such a strong concentration of color to produce black, it is easier to buy black color. Mixing black color IS possible, but you need to use very strong paste colors and a LOT of it which makes the recipe bitter. A pinch of salt will help with the bitterness, but the only way to get a good strong black is with a LOT of color, especially when using gel color. Be careful with black. It will stain just about anything it touches.

Use white icing with a combination of royal blue, red, orange and lemon. Or, start with a dark brown color or chocolate icing (made with melted chocolate and/or black or Dutch process cocoa) and add black. I Just keep adding more black color SLOWLY until you reach your desired color. Remember colors darken as they sit.

For small amounts of black icing (for piping buttons, dots, etc) you can just add enough black food coloring to your white icing to create black

Try adding your color before adding the powdered sugar when making the butter cream. For black add brown then black and for red add yellow, orange then red for red.

It's not buttercream, but if you are aiming for black, try making chocolate buttercream and adding black coloring to that. Even store bought chocolate frosting will work, depending on what you want to do with the frosting.

Starting with chocolate (I believe) is the best
option. I have found that Americolor is the
best brand of coloring for it. Especially the black
or red. With Wilton the more coloring you put in,
the "weirder" the taste. Anyway, with white icing
as the base you just have to keep adding the color
until it is close, then let it sit. If after a half hour or
so it is not darke enough you just have to add
more. I have heard that using a buttercream with
milk in it helps with getting/retaining the deeper
colors. The only problem that I have found with
the white icing based black is that the color will
sometimes "bleed" into surrounding lighter colors.
HTH

Jen