Hey everyone i would appreciate some info, i have never really had to cover and cake in complete black icing, just here and there, ive noticed it takes awhole lot to get even a little amount of buttercream tinted black, the black that doesnt look like a dark purple, any help on how to get alot of icing to dye a dark black? Im needing to make a cake for a friends Bday party and they are wanting the Tn smokey dog so it will be alot of black!
Thanks so much for the help!

Save all your colored icing bits and mix them together. It will likely result in a yuck greenish brown. Add the black to that.

Beware, though, black icing turns lips, tongues, teeth and table linens gray/black.

A local cake decorator mentioned on her blog that she does black by making chocolate buttercream with Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder. I don't think she uses any black food coloring, but at the very least, it would get the icing good and dark to start with, so if you felt it needed to be darker, it would only take a little black food coloring.

I agree with sagebrush! Use chocolate (DARK chocolate if possible) buttercream to start with. This is what I always do and you barely have to add any black to make it black. This way it won't taste like food coloring and everyone won't look scarey with black mouths etc... I know from experience with that... its pretty gross...plus chocolate is yummy!! Of course if they don't like chocolate then you have to go with the lots of food coloring/ mouth-dying method.. which works too. Its just less attractive

LOL! Yeah, i really didnt want to give everyone black teeth! haha
Thanks so much for the tip, dont know why i didnt think of that! And I think pretty much everyone that will be at the party would prefer chocolate anyway!