Hello All

Hope all is well with everyone. I have a question about icing. How do you get a rich red from white icing. It seems that when I mix red coloring with white icing it never gets really red. Its always a bright red. I bought the Wilton brand Red Red coloring, but before I get to mixing I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue and how they solved this. I thought about mixing a little orange in as well, but a little unsure. Help Please. Need to do Elmo cupcakes for a birthday party.

Any advance would be greatly appreciated

TIA
Miranda

I had the same problem with red until I got the Americolor red. Haven't gone back since. Some ladies add some red Kool-Aid to the icing but you do end up with that flavor icing.

Americolor works much better than Wilton colors in my opinion. CakeCentral has good prices on Americolor also.

Does the Americolor leave an aftertaste? I have read many good comments on it, but wasn't sure about the flavor.

I too need a nice, rich red. Just made a red icing and used the Wilton no taste red, but never achieved the real red that I wanted. I will have to pick up some Americolor and give it a try. Thanks!

You may want to try a lot of the Wilton no taste red. I got a pretty good red with it with no after taste. I haven't tried the Americolor. I also have some powder that I haven't tried. I heard it is good for true colors but haven't heard anything on the taste.

I decorate frozen custard cakes as a little side job, we use Rich's Bettercreme to ice them. One afternoon I was bored and I decided to play around with the liquid gel colorings they have there (big squeeze bottles that are a lot like Americolors).

I get the BEST red when I mix true red-red with some purple. Add a little purple at a time till you get the desired result. Makes it nice and rich red!

I always add a 1/2-3/4 pkg. of red kool aid to make the red taste good.... you don't have that bitter taste from all the gel paste...

Interesting....now I will try mixing a little purple with red, as well as experimenting with some kool-aid I need to take a vacation day just to play!

you can also try adding a little bit of cocoa powder; you will also need to slightly increase your liquid.

Adding a bit of purple is a great idea! I will have to try it next time!

Sadly I don't have much time to purchase the Americolor Brand, but I will try adding the purple. Stay tunned, hopefully I will have so cool cupcakes to post by tomorrow.

Thanks for all your help

Hope this isn't too late.t made cheeseburger cupcakes and..yeah, I needed red for the catsup. All I have is Wilton no taste red and it gave me a deep pink but not catsup-y red. Hmmmmm.. I found a bottle of your generic red food coloring (think Easter eggs?) That real iquidy stuff. Anyway I mixed a couple of squirts in last night and stirred it up, went to work and prayed. When I got home I was DE-lighted to find my deep red I needed....hope this helps you

I will post the pics now for you too see it...

sweet_T7 I love your cheeseburger cupcakes and the red turned out great!!! It would be bad to have pink catsup

I have some generic red food coloring that I use in red velvet cake, but didn't think about trying it in my icing. I need to just sit down and experiment with all of the tips!!!