I have only been cake decorating a short while, but can't figure out how to make frosting/icing BLACK!

Any suggestions?????
Thank you in advance

Hi dramasquirt, welcome to cc. I must warn you. Please be careful this site is highly addictive. You have to start out with chocolate icing and add black gel color until you get there. I would add alot more black than you would normally add of other colors (like pink) to start. I hope this helps.

You can start by mixing any left over colors all together, to make that "funky" brown color, and then add black. Or you can start with a dark blue and keep adding black, till you get what you want. Rem, that the color will darken within a few hours. HTH

YEah the chocolate idea works well but if you want to be lazy and on;y have to add a few decorations in black icing do what i do and buy a tube of ready made black icing in the cake decorating aisle, wilton makes it. You can also buy couplers to attach to the tube so you can use your icing tips directly onto the tube. I like this especially if you don't want chocolate tasting icing. Plus its EASY. I know it doesn't answer your question on how to MAKE black icing but hey its black icing either way. The only down turn would be is that you can't make it thicker but you probably won't be making many black BC roses anyway.

cookiemama, I agree for small portions... unfortunately, i can't get away with that for this cake~ four 8" cakes, designed to look like the drum set from "RockBand" (I'm even building a drum stand). Thank you for the suggestions! Does it work for bc or whipped cream frosting? (friend requested whipped cream)

THANK YOU again . . . and, yes, this site is addicting =)