Please help......I really need to find a real good recipe for a frosting that I can make black for my sons first birthday. I have tried some chocolate buttercream recipes and then added the black paste color to it and it still tastes awful!!! anyone have any good recipes for black icing that can be used for decorating too. I have been searching for something please help....

I use the wilton recipe, except i sub half of the veg. shortening with butter.

I use Americolor Black. You can try by adding brown coloring to first and then the black if you want, but i find Americolor is good without adding the brown. But first thing i would do is NOT use wilton, it takes way to much to get black with wilton.

Americolor can be found at many places online, at some local cake supply stores (if you have any near you) and recently Hobby Lobby started carrying the small bottles of Americolor.

How much black do you need?

Option 1:

If it's just for parts of a cake and not an entire cake you could make a chocolate buttercream (I only use butter, not shortening plus Hershey's cocoa, powdered sugar, vanilla and milk) and add 2 tubes of Wilton premade black in the squeeze tubes. I did this for a racetrack cake where I was making the checkered flag on all sides. It will darken a bit after it's mixed and look pure black.

The premade black didn't taste bitter like adding too much of the gel paste would. It just tasted like chocolate! I'm not a fan of the Wilton premade icing, but just wanted to let you know that it worked out perfectly for my cake, taste and color wise.

OR use option 2:

Americolor Super Black can be found at Hobby Lobby. It doesn't take as much of that as it does the Wilton black gel.