I'm new here. New new new. My mom made cakes when I was a kid, but nothing on the level of the ladies here. I'm going to try my hand at cupcakes for my son's 1st birthday And I have a question that might seem utterly ridiculous to you pros...

Can you color chocolate buttercream frosting? I understand that the color wouldn't be the same as with a white buttercream...but can you do it at all or would it just be a muddy mess? DH is set on chocolate frosting for the boy's cupcakes, but I want colors.

You could color it black but that's about it.

What if you frost them in chocolate and maybe make some brightly colored fondant embellishments? It's like playing with play-doh and sooooooooo much fun!

Compromise! Do half chocolate and half vanilla with colors.

I'm no expert like some of the others on here, but I I don't think it will work. I've tried without much success. Depending on how dark your chocolate buttercream is, it will overpower any amount of color you add. Maybe you could use chocolate extract to the white buttercream so that you get the chocolate taste your husband wants, but the ability to color them like you want?!

White chocolate buttercream?

Welcome! This place is the best for learning about all things cake!

I've never tried coloring chocolate frosting anything other than black! I suspect it would indeed turn out to be a muddy mess to try any other colors

Could you fill the cupcakes with chocolate frosting instead, then use a regular buttercream to color for the tops? Or make a white chocloate buttercream that can be tinted any color?

OR go ahead and do the tops in the choc BC, but add colorful decorations (purchased or made with fondant, chocolate molds or gumpaste)?

Those are the options I see.

HTH, and happy caking!

You can color chocolate just fine. Just bear in mind that the color will be much deeper. I have colored chocolate buttercream red, dark teal, army green, black, and blue. If you whip the buttercream up a bit, you will end up with a slightly lighter base color as well which can help you control the intensity of the resulting color. A more fudgy, almost thick ganache frosting will likely not work as well, but if you do a true chocolate buttercream, or a whipped ganache (so easy) you can get a nice result. In my past experience that is....

If you have to have chocolate frosting, maybe you could color the cake mix, (if it isn't choc. of course) that way the cupcakes will be colorfull when they unwrap them. Just a thougt.

Thanks for the replies! I didn't think it would work but was hoping that you ladies knew some secret tip. LOL I might do half and half like someone suggested. White chocolate and the extract wouldn't work...he's a total choco snob! Even if the extract tasted exactly like chocolate he would insist he didn't like it just because it's not "real chocolate". I think half and half will work nicely.

I'm going to try the monster cupcakes where they look all hairy. So we'll have some choco monsters and some bright monsters. It'll work!

trixietreat, i am confused. Could you, of course, when you have the time, make some chocolate buttercream, using either cocoa or melted milk, sem-sweet chocolate ,etc. and color it up with these colors that you have made it in and take a pic and show us. I would really like to see this. i have been decorating 16 yrs. and have never seen or heard of this. lol. I am not trying to be smart elec, i just need to see it with my own eyes. This will be a new experience for me. Thank you, when you have the time.

Why not buy some fondant and roll it out like a pie crust and use cookie cutters to cut out little shapes and let them dry and stick them in the top of the cupcake. Or if you are good at shaping animals you could also make little animals to sit on top. Good luck and Welcome to CC.

Squirt the chocolate icing inside the cupcake and then decorate the top with either fondant or colored BC

Ive seen a deep dark red made from chocolate icing but thats all that I have seen myself.

I agree with Trixie. Chocolate buttercream does not have to be dark brown to begin with. You can flavor it with cocoa only (no melted choc). This will give you a pale brown base. Coloring this will give you warm, earthy, jewel tone versions of the colors you choose. This works well with red, blue & green particularly. Avoid yellow as you end up with baby poop color. I'm just sayin'

Wanted to add that it's a common practice in painting to give your canvas a brown wash of paint before you start painting. Then the brown adds a uniform warmth as it peeps through whatever you paint over it.

Another trick in painting (that can be applied to any art, including cakes) that helps unify your color scheme is to pick a color and add a titch of that color to all the colors you use in your painting. You will be surprised at how it pulls all your colors together and makes them look like they belong together.

When you get a request for a cake in three colors that you think look awful together, add a bit of red or some color other than the three (not enough that anyone would recognize that you did it) to all of them and suddenly they look good together. It will add a unifying cast to the colors that pulls them together. And when they're all together, you don't see the red cast, you just see that they feel right together.