i need black icing.....any ideas on the best way to get your icing a true black and not grey? thanks

Use gray Once it is on the cake it will turn black in time.
There are many, many threads on this subject with lots of ideas but *THE* most important one is those dark/intense colors (navy; red; black etc) MUST be made at least the night before needing.

You will need a lot of gel colour to get a nice black (depending on the amount of icing you want coloured), and as kakeladi says, it will still look a bit grey at first. Leave it to sit for a day, and it will darken.

I use dark chocolate frosting as a base for my black frosting. Also, if you mix a color like black right before you need to use it, in order to make your frosting the shade it needs to be RIGHT NOW, you will need to use a ton of it. So I always mix the rich colors (red, royal, black) at least 48 hours before I need to use them. This gives the colors time to saturate without needing to use too much gel color.

Use Americolor black

What about the taste? WOnt that be gross tasting?

are you trying to cover the whole cake with black??

no i was only needing it for a border and the writing

I have used canned dark chocolate icing and added a small amt of black if I needed to cover a large area.

You can also mix together all those bits of leftover bc from previous cakes. It will make a camo green. Then you don't have to add as much black to get black.

For what you need, though, I'd probably just use the choc bc as is. It will look like black in small amounts like that.

Chefmaster liqua gel.........use very little, no need to make ahead time as you get black instantly (as well as red), no bad taste.

I order mine from Dixie's. They have many vibrant colors and she sent me a sample of her black. It is wonderful not to have to mix colors anymore.

When I need to use black icing or black fondant I always start with dark chocolate icing or fondant and add black coloring gel to that. It is much easier to achieve the black when starting with the darker color from the chocolate. HTH