Hello all, I am wanting to start airbrushing cake details. I can airbrush fine with paint...and I bought a seperate food only brush with oil free compressor. However, I am looking for a recipe that will air brush colors onto cakes that will not run to bad. Something that will stick and have good control. I live in the middle of nowhere so I am not interested in pre made stuff, just home recipes....

Thanks,

please email me if you have details.

It's too bad you're not interested in pre-made airbrush colors - because they will give you the best results and performance for your $. The solid colors I use are $4/8oz. and a little color goes a long way.

With close to 20 years of airbrush experience on just about every surface known, I don't DIY colors. Tinker? Yes.

Culinary Airbrush Color Recipes may be hard to come by - it takes SO much trial-and-error to get the mix right that it's just not cost effective. And, there are so many options for pigment - dry, paste, gel, liquid... making pearls/lusters, metallics adds to the complexity. Pigment extenders are mostly water with a bit of liquid sugar (like glucose), maybe a bit of glycerin or alcohol to help speed drying.

That being said, so long as you go work with LIGHT layers, you can build up d.i.y. color to good opacity without running and with good control. 

Regardless, cake decorating surfaces take color differently than other airbrush surfaces and almost all WILL absorb color to some extent - so fine detail work is possible, but crisp details WILL soften after application. How fast will depend on the surface.

That's why most use hand-painted lines for details. I prefer layering airbrush with hand painted colored cocoa butter. Others like gel colors mixed with vodka/alcohol. 

AOrder a big box of airbrush colors that will last you a long time. Really, it's the best thing.

Do you guys think she's referring to a good surface on which to airbrush? Like buttercream doesn't always play nicely when airbrushed; sometimes the color beads up. But fondant & airbrushed colors are good friends....For airbrush colors I use good food colors by American I believe, thinned with vodka if necessary. A decent kit that will last ages is under $30, and has all the basic colors which can be layered or custom blended as needed. I also use vodka to flush color out of the system to clean it when I'm done for the night.....the other day I found one of my friends spraying the rinse in her mouth & chasing it with OJ....