Does anyone have any suggestions for tinting royal icing gray? When I add black food coloring it looks sort of violet. I am trying to make silver hearts. The first batch I made came out pretty good using silver luster dust, but I would like the base to be a better gray.

Thanks for any help!

I tried some blue food coloring along with the black, that does seem to help some.

I tend to use powder colours instead of the rest and I get the gray with just a little black and I mean little, like an itty bitty bit lol.

Try this (it works for me with fondant to get a beautiful gray). Start with chocolate royal icing (add some cocoa powder--you can find recipes on the 'net). Add black to make it, well, black (you can try to just add tons of black to white icing, but that can be tricky and hard to pull off too). THEN, mix a little of that black into white royal icing. Viola! Even though the base of the black is chocolate, the black and white mixed together should come out a pretty gray and not a dirty brown-ish color (at least that's how it worked with fondant). Good luck!

Time helps! When I tried to tint my royal icing black, using super black gel color, I thought it would never get there, but it darkened up a lot when I let it stand covered in plastic for an hour or so. So, wait a bit after adding the color to see how the gray comes out...

Thanks for the ideas. I will have to do some experimenting!

When mine turned violet I added a tiny bit of green and got a nice gray color.