This my first time posting here in the forums, and I'm posting a disaster! So not good.

I had a wedding this past weekend and the bride chose a cake with a creamy pale yellow buttercream & fondant swags. I made all of the buttercream ahead of time & then colored it in my mixer so that the color would evenly distribute. She wanted the color to be more of a cream/ivory and less yellow, so I started with adding just ivory. Then to brighten it, I added the tiniest drop of yellow. I know yellow can be very overpowering, so I was very careful not to use much. The icing color looked perfect when I put it on the cakes. But as they dried, they just got darker and darker. By the time I delivered them, they were at least 3 shades darker and more yellow than they should have been.

Does anyone know what would cause them to dry so much darker? I've done colored buttercream on other cakes before & never had this happen. And I felt especially bad since it was someone's wedding cake! I even offered them a partial refund because I thought it looked so bad. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Hello neighbor and welcome to cake central you will love it here. I say neighbor because I live in Estill County, and work in Richmond. I have probably seen you around the cake decorating aisles of Hobby Lobby. wally world etc.. my haunts..LOL You will love this site. But be warned.. IT IS ADDICTIVE !!!!

to answer your question... how long did you let the buttercream rest? I always make my icing one week in advance, then color one day prior to using. Because in my experience the longer the color rests, the darker, more intense it gets, (as long as it is out of sunlight).

You could have done without the yellow totally. The cake would have taken on a more ivory tone with each day that it set. HTH's

I agree with tesso. Only I don't wait a week. I just make the BC a day ahead. But do remember, the BC does get darker as it sets.

Sandy

Welcome!!!

I totally agree, probably didn't need the yellow at all. When I need ivory, I use real vanilla, not clear, and I get the perfect shade of ivory. I let my bc rest a couple of days.

Hello from another Kentuckian! Welcome to CC.
I try to go a little lighter than what I want the finished color to be. This bit me in the behind when my granddaughter's cake was too pale!! Oh, well, it tasted great.

Thanks everyone! I generally make my bc a couple of days ahead of time. Next time I need a colored wedding cake, I will definitely do a test cake! Another thought I had was that instead of using butter, I could have used butter-flavored Crisco & it would have been the perfect color. I guess hindsight really is 20/20! lol