I want to make a chocolate cake, but I want the icing to be red, white and blue as it is american themed. I don't really like roll on type icing the taste isn't great so ideally I'd love the icing to be chocolate. Now I could just use white chocolate but I prefer plain chocolate. Could I maybe paint the cake after the icing sets? Bear in mind here I am really not an experienced cake maker so I don't really know what resources are out there :P

I believe you can buy chocolate flavouring, either extracts or oils. That might be a possibility.

You would have to use white chocolate to the best of my knowledge. I tried to do a search and couldn't find any chocolate extract that was clear. I personally don't like the taste of it in my icing anyway because it is a bit boozy. 

AWhat if you put your iced cake in the fridge and let the icing firm up, then take it out and ice it with a thin layer of the colored icing? Make it with white chocolate so the flavor complements the chocolate icing.

This is a really good idea. I will do the two layers as suggested. I will find a recipe for hard-setting chocolate icing and then put a white layer on top. Thanks very much for your advice. One more thing through reading some other threads is there a special type of food colouring you need to colour white chocolate or can you use the regular stuff you find in supermarkets? As i want the colours quite vibrant I don't want to drown the chocolate in colouring and find it gets ruined!

Thanks everyone who posted :D