Hi everyone-
I recently purchased the gel colors (wilton, I think) for tinting icing, etc... is there a trick to tinting icing? I tried just mixing it in with a toothpick, then using a spatula, but the color never really blended. It looked green, but up close you could see definite separation (little green dots on white)

I hope this makes sense, it's sort of hard to articulate exactly what happened, but it really frustrated me.
Can humidity effect this at all?

Thanks to anyone who replies.

was there any salt in your icing recipe?? sometimes the color will act funny with the salt.....some peole use popcorn salt or they dissolve the salt in the extracts first and then add to the frosting.....wilton's gels are so unpredictable as far as I'm concerned I totally use americolor for everything now but I still have some old wilton ones that I keep because I can't stand to throw them out if they're still good and I think man, one day I might run out of a color and those wilton gels will save me LOL however they keep leaking all over the place (argh..wilton...)

Did you see the white parts after it was bagged and you were using it? Were you making a dark green?

When making deep dark colors I will have it where it looks like the crisco seperates from the rest of the icing. It never happens until after I put it in a bag and start to pipe with it, maybe it is the warmth of my hands that does it. I've had it happen mostly with Americolors though.

Thanks for helping...
yes I did use salt. It's hard to describe- it looked light green (see photo) but up close you could tell it was originally white buttercream w/ green dots (maybe from the salt?)


I feel like such an amature...

This isn't the salt issue. When you have the 'salt issue' which isn't always because of salt you will have big white spots dotting through your icing.

This looks kinda like the issue I have when making deeper colors. Next time it happens I'm gonna have to play with the icing to see if I can fix it. Not sure if it is too much color or too much liquid (come to think of it I see that happen with my students thin when it is way to soft). Maybe adding powder sugar will help with it.