I am trying to make a cake for my nephew. I had big plans for this cake and had a very cool idea and then on Sunday we had to go into the hospital with my 3 yr old and just got out last night! The cake is due tonight in a matter of about 3 hours! I'm trying to "paint" on these little lego figures I made. I downscaled the cake alot from what I was going to make but I am having a BIG problem with trying to paint.....One of the figures is completely black and his face is suppose to be painted red. Well, I can't get red to show up on his face!! I'm mixing with clear vanilla extract and have tried using just a little and even straight food coloring! Nothing is showing up! Also, when I use another color, it seems to thin......HELP! I'm going to lose it cause the cake is suppose to be covered in black fondant as well and I was going to do most all the decorating in PAINT! If I can't get it to show up or its too thin, its going to look like crap! It would have helped alot to not have to be doing this all at the last minute, but being in the hospital, I didn't have much of a choice.....Can ANYONE give me some paint advice and how you mix your paint to get a nice "paint" consistancy and not just like 'water'?? Thanks so much in advance! I don't have an airbrush either so that is out...

Why don't you put a little white fondant over the black and then paint it red so it will show up.
Use either vodka or lemon extract to mix your gel colors. You will get a much better consistency than using vanilla extract. I think it has to do with the high alcohol content in the others. Good Luck.

Thanks! The design is on a very small area and very difficult and I don't think that it would look right unless i actually cut the design out and painted that red and put it on the face. It's so small though and so many lines that that would be difficult I think and just putting the white over his face would look funny. It's a great thought but its a lego darth maul guy and he's pretty small and so is his face! I was planning on using the same color red though on the cake itself to paint and the cake is going to be black fondant as well......this is just not turning out like I pictured in my mind. I didn't think I would have a problem painting showing up on the black fondant......thank you so much for you help though and I'm going to get out my vodka and try that and I think I may be using too much liquid with the food coloring too....it's too watery.

You might need to pipe on the decos with red royal instead. There's no way any color is going to show up painted straight on the black.

Thanks guys for your help. I actually did get red to show up on the black fondant by mixing luster color red and red gel food coloring together with no alcohol or anything! It ended up showing up on the fondant cake and so I used it on the face and it worked really good! The cake didn't turn out nearly as good as I wanted it to cause I only had about 3 hours to do it and had some trouble but I managed. Also, with myself being out of it because of being in the hospital for 3 days and overwhelmed when I got home, I put 4 on his cake instead of a 5! Good thing it was for my nephew and my brother completely understood! My nephew simply replied with "I'm not 5 till later so really I "am" 4 right now". They were all kids and thought it was great. I guess that's what counts.