I have seen some beautifully stenciled cakes and am planning on making one for my SIL's engagement party in a few weeks. I've never stenciled before so I am both excited and nervous! My question is, how do you get black royal icing??? Does anyone have a recipe that will not cause black tongues when eaten?? Is it sold ready made anywhere? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

TIA

Any time I've done black I've just used gel colours...if there is another way I would love to know too

From everything I have read and seen -- you need to make black using gel colors. You won't be able to avoid the colored tongues. Ameri Color works great for those dark colors.

I just did a stenciled cake with black royal icing, and my only warning is that I had to use two full bottles of black Wilton color to get it truly black. My mistake was that I got the icing to the proper consistency FIRST, then added the black. By the time I had gotten it true black, it was thinner than it needed to be to do the stenciling well. But if I added more sugar, it was grey again. So you might want to make it a little stiffer and let the black do the thinning for you.

Also, it stains horribly. My counters have permanent purple spots now where little bits of dry icing landed as I moved the cakes, and it stained my dress as I barely brushed against it while loading it in the car, so do be careful with it!