I am planning on making a cake with pink fondant and layer of pink frosting inside. My idea is to have the actual 'cake' tinted lilac to make it really stand out when cut. Is there a 'best' way to go about that? I don't want to color it and have the batter look great - and then pull it out of the oven to see a grey color or just have it look very blah.

Will a good amount of wilton color be ok?

I would think the wilton or just plain ol' food coloring would work fine.

I've only colored cake once and it turned out well. I used blue though so it looked like water. I would say add enough so that it is the color you want and it should bake out just fine. I just used regular Wilton gel paste color. Also, if your using white cake I would make it with just egg whites so that it is as white as you can get it before you color it.
HTH and Good Luck,
Heather

Ok thanks. I wasn't sure. I have used the ol' box of that swirl mix with pink and blue. But those colors come in a powder form in that lil packet - if I remember correctly. Oh well maybe I'll make a test run cake to see what colors bake up the prettiest.

Oh good idea about the egg whites - I did not even think about that!!!

I just did a cake that was ivory and lavender. I baked two cakes, one white but used the whole eggs to give it the ivory color and one I put wilton purple coloring in it, a lot of it before baking. Then I torted both layers and alternated ivory and lavender. It turned out great and the client was very impressed.

Wow, that is a good idea... I may try a variation of that on my cake...

thanks!

Since yellow is opposite lavender on the color wheel, you run a risk of dulling the color if you include whole eggs. Maybe if the color is strong enough it will overpower the yellow in the eggs, but I'd not want to risk it. Let us know how it turns out!

I've made them tons of times.....my kids always want their cakes colored......some have been green, some have been purple, bright pink, orange....you name it........half the time they look like play-dough.....LOL.....but they still taste good......they pretty much stay the same color once they're baked......I did notice one time with the purple it actually darkened or brightened a bit once baked, but I thought it looked even prettier......and I never bothered with the whole egg white only thing....but it does make good sense.

The one thing you have to remember when baking a cake with just the egg whites is that it makes it a very "soft" cake. I tried making a white cake with egg whites only and when I stacked the top layer on it it fell apart because it was too "soft". Maybe the word I'm looking for is light instead. Egg yolks help hold together the cake and make it "heavy".

I made a flag cake and tinted it red and blue. Used a yellow cake, though, because I didn't have a recipe for white.

It turned out just fine.

I wonder if you dumped both packets of the mix into your entire cake batter (rather than each just into a cup of batter). The pink and blue mixed together would automatically make it a shade of purple. And using the entire batter would probably soften the brightness. I might try that myself sometime!