I always have a difficult time getting things colored black. I've decided the best medium to work with for my latest cake is going to be modeling chocolate. Has anyone ever had any experiences with this? I didn't know if I would be better off trying to color milk chocolate or white chocolate? Or what the best type of coloring would be for chocolate...a gel or a dry powder?

Start with dark chocolate and use oil-based candy colors instead of the water-based ones. Or you can buy black candy melts if you can find them...that's the easiest way to go. I buy a lot of them around Halloween.Whenever I try to order any that's the one color that's out of stock

If you can't find the black candy melts, I have used gel colors in modeling chocolate with no problems. I would start with a dark chocolate though. White stays too soft if you have a lot of color.

I've used candy melts and colored with gel colors, both worked great. When the color I want isn't available I use white candy melts.

That's true too, the gel colors usually have a glycerine base (I think) so they work with the chocolate.

thanks all! wasn't able to find black candy melts at any local stores, i'm gonna experiment with dark chocolate and black food gel

I use candy melts in all colors, or generally add powdered color with white chocolate so that it doesn't change the texture of the modeling chocolate. We have a JoAnn Fabrics store in Seattle that carries all of the Wilton candy melt colors. I've seen them at Michael's too.

I use any gel colours in my modelling chocolate. In this cake http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2373078/dory-finding-nemo-cake all the decorations apart from the seaweed are white modelling chocolate. Dory was coloured using Wilton's Royal Blue, the rest were a mixture between Wilton, Americolor and Squire's.

For black, you just need dark choc and black gel.

I also find that adding a little fondant to modeling chocolate helps it's stability so you could add some pre-colored black fondant and that will help darken the color as well. I usually use Satin Ice or Wilton black. It's not enough fondant for the wilton to cause the modeling chocolate to taste bad It still tastes like modeling choc

You can just add a little less corn syrup when you're making the candy clay, too. That will make it stiffer.

costumeczar when I do that it gets crumbly. I love modeling chocolate but to get it smooth and workable mine is always a little soft. I'm sure part of it is the TX heat

I've used both Wilton icing color and americolor w/ white modelling chocolate with good results. To use black I've only used the americolor but it turned my white chocolate black w/ just the smallest drop of color.

Michaels carries Black candy melts year round now.. I am in PA and every time I stop by there they have them.. its so nice that they carry them all the time now.
Kima

I can only find black candy melts at my Michael's at halloween and that's stock up time!

First batch with the wilton gel was much too soft to work with...tried it again using half the corn syrup and it came out perfect. I'm going to have to start looking for black candy melts and stocking up!