Hi all
I've a cake to do in a couple of weeks where I need to create a mehndi design around it, in metallic gold...

I've tried colouring buttercream gold with a combination of lots of yellow, less orange and a little red, but although it's gold, it's not metallic gold.

Any ideas please? I'm sure it'll have to be royal icing, but it's the colour I'm struggling with.

thanks in advance for your help, CakeCentral!
Rachel
Reigate Cakes

If it was me I'd use royal icing - make it gold ish or at least yellow, pipe it on and let it dry solid, then paint it with gold dust made into paste with a little alcohol. It turns out great!

Sorry I dont know how to do it with buttercream it might work if you use crusting bc and follow the same steps? Be very gentle painting though if you press hard and its not perfectly set underneath it wil crack the surface (learned the hard way on some cupcakes when I got impatient waiting on the royal icing to dry!)

Hi strangely, I'm doing a henna design Bollywood themed wedding cake end of the month. Been trying to get the gold color effect and also a bright maroon color. No luck so far but will keep checking this post and keep trying.

I did this cake with buttercream. I started with a gold colored icing, piped the design, refrigerated the cake until the icing firmed up, then painted the piping with gold luster dust dissolved in vodka. That's the only way that I've found to get the metallic color on buttercream. You can't really mix gold luster dust into it directly and get the metallic color. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.396305613670.174792.92855088670#!/photo.php?fbid=10150186307623671&set=a.396305613670.174792.92855088670&type=1&theater

Hello costumeczar,

Thanks for that, how did you make the gold colored icing to start with?

Wow, beautiful cake! Did you have to constantly keep refrigerating it to keep it firm enough to paint? It must have taken forever.

Thanks...I think that I probably did all the painting tier by tier then assembled it later. I know that I put the top three tiers on at the reception site then piped the bottom borders on there.