Yesterday I attended a wedding reception where the cake was the popular black scrollwork on white. Everything about this cake--texture, flavor, icing--was basically awful, but it was a good reminder to me that black can bleed. In this case, it was a very pretty shade of bright pink! I've read through the forums on how to address this, but unfortunately most of the posts are lost. The best advice I've seen is to start with chocolate icing--good reminder!--and to not use IMBC. I plan to do some trial pieces and would like to gather whatever hints you talented people have before I begin. What works for you? TIA

Wow; 35 views and no responses. Clearly, inquiring minds want to know! Surely some of you experts out there have the definitive answer to this. What say you??

I think a lot of it has to do with the environment where yo are - humidity and all. I'm in Alaska and its real dry and cool so no problems. I wouldn't do black SMBC/IMBC just because of the amount of coloring it would take. SMBC is my usual icing, but I will switch to American BC for the parts I need in really dark colors. I also have done black royal on fondant w no issues.

For me, it's using an icing that's not mostly black food gel. Starting with chocolate icing helps, as does coloring with powdered caramel color as a base rather than just adding Wilton or Americolor gels to white icing. I think refrigerating your icing at least overnight to let the color set well before you attempt to pipe it also helps, and of course keeping everything cool while you're working with it is key.

I did my own graduation cake with black scrolls on white buttercream (in my photos) and was SO afraid of bleeding. I had done FBCTs in the past and had issues with the black bleeding, so the scrolls had me nervous. I took the precautions I mentioned though, and had no bleeding issues at all, and the cake sat outside during my graduation party (3+ hours).