I am just learning to decorate. (self-taught) I want to make a zebra cake for my daughter's birthday, but I don't want to use fondant. Can I paint with food coloring on buttercream? Any tips would be appreciated! Thanks!

If you use food coloring it will stain the lips, mouth and teeth of those eating it. Also the taste is terrible. Try a marmallow fondant or a lot of people on cc like the Duff ready made fondant at Michaels. You could just use it for the stripes. That way people can pick it off if they don't like it

If you really don't care for fondant than do the white in butter cream but do the stripes in fondant..this way you just peel off the fondant.

I also disagree about staining. I paint with food coloring quite a bit and have never had a problem with any of those items.

try it on a cupcake and see how you like the effect.

Yes, you can. Let the buttercream crust first, use a soft brush, and make your "paint" in a shallow tray by thinning regular gel food coloring with water or clear alcohol (vodka or lemon extract work well). You may be able to soak up any "oops"es with a paper towel, but especially if you are doing black on white, you'll want to do some practice runs first and hopefully avoid any major mistakes! Americolor is reportedly the best brand to use if you're concerned about the taste; Wilton's black can taste bitter if you use a lot of it.

Or, instead of painting, use all buttercream for the stripes. Just pipe or spread the darker color on top of the lighter.

I was about to suggest what Hollyml said. I haven't tried it, but I've seen a zebra cake piped with buttercream, then smoothed, using either the melvira method or the viva paper towel method. It looked good!

I am definately going to practice first. I'm making a cake for the office in a couple of weeks, so I'm going to try it out on my co-workers! haha I have heard that the black is bitter, so I was thinking about trying some chocolate mmf just for the stripes and hot pink bc. I think it might work. What is the Melvira method? I would still prefer to use bc. I made my first batch of chocolate bc last weekend & it was awesome!

I agree with piping on stripes. To avoid the bitter taste, just start with dark chocolate BC then color it black....

http://cakecentral.com/articles/126/quick-easy-smooth-icing-using-a-roller-melvira-method

[quote="zespri"]http://cakecentral.com/articles/126/quick-easy-smooth-icing-using-a-roller-melvira-method

Genius!!! I KNEW there had to be a good trick to getting the bc smooth!

lol...it looks neat huh I've wanted to do the viva paper towel trick, but I've bought so many brands of paper towels, and not one of them has a smooth side.

It took me a while to find a roller with 'dense foam' too, but I finally found one at a wallpaper shop.

I still haven't tried that method either, but I'm ready for it..lol!

This is the cake I made using chocolate BC colored black for the stripes. I just piped the black on top of the red for the stripes. I used the basket weave tip on the reverse side, where it is flat.

http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1476158

HTH