Well I recently made a mickey cake and the customer didn't want fondant so I used buttercream. However I had to make red and black buttercream. I personally don't like to eat colored buttercream especially black or any other bold color. Any tips on how to make the color not bleed so much, or just deal with it? Haha, the next one I have to do it orange and black. Not sure how to go about it.

Thanks in advance!!

Red seems really hard to achieve cause i don't like adding a huge amount of dye... i'd be interested to hear others techniques...

black is easier if you just make your BC chocolate first...

I believe chef master has some type of paste color that is designed to bleed less. I will have to find it online. I will post back with the link as soon as I find it.

Make the black actually chocolate - very dk brown. As for the red you can flavor and color all at once by adding UNsweetened KoolAid powder to b'cream Start w/about 1/4 tsp Koolaid to 1/2 cup of deep pink b'cream. (Actually for red you can start w/any one of pink, orange, or yellow. As for the KoolAid any flavor that is red such as strawberry, black cherry, etc.) This needs to be done at least the night before as it takes time for the color to 'develope'. When you look at it after sitting overnight, it might look speckled and you'll think you ruined it, but all that needs to be done is give it a good stirring Of course you would have to get permission from the customer to use either of these ideas amd be sure the icing flavor will go with the c ake flavor.
Another way to make black is to save all the tiny dibs and dabs of icing - any and all colors - in a jar kept in the fzr until you need some black. Now defrost, add some black gel color & stir well. It will take *much less* food coloring because you are not starting out w/white.

The best way I've dealt with highly colored buttercream is to use it as the last layer or two on my cake. No one wants black teeth and tongues (except kids of course) but I think deeply dyed colors taste bitter too. I use my regular white or chocolate buttercream to cover the cake (refrigerating between adding layers of BC so it gets a hard surface), then last I put on a thin layer of colored buttercream. You really don't need to use much to cover the regular BC. You can see in my photos the colored cakes I've done. This process works great and you don't end up using a ton of dye either since you're not dyeing the entire lot of buttercream. HTH!

No good answer here. I can only tell you that at the cake shop I used to work at if anybody wanted red or black buttercream, the owner would not do the order unless she could use fondant. I don't believe she charged a lot more for fondant. But I can't recall any customer saying no. If they didn't want fondant we found a way to change the design with them.

Before I started working there I had a friend who ordered something that needed black frosting, I can't remember exactly what it was. It was for a kids party. As everybody started eating the cake, the teeth of everybody turned black from the frosting. The person who brought the cake was mortified and angry. She couldn't understand why the cake shop owner didn't warn her about this. And this is probably why she won't use red or black BC anymore, because someone complained.

At least with black fondant you get the look you want without black teeth. If you don't like the fondant, you can just leave it on the plate too.

cakeandpartygirl is right, chefmaster gel color is very concentrated so you use very little to achieve red or black and there is no bad taste or bleeding. You also get the desired color instantly (no waiting overnight for it to deepen). You will still have black teeth and tounge if you frost the whole cake in black though.

Well no black it is. Just for decoration. I don't think orange would be too horrible but we'll see. Thanks in advance.


This is for my family so they may just have to deal with orange mouths. [=

I was just sitting here an hour ago thinking about a cake to make for my daughter turning 1 in August and was thinking Minnie Mouse. Hmmm may have to give fondant a try or think of another design. I don't want her or anyone at the party with black mouths and teeth. Forgot about that part of black icing. lol

Here is the link for one place that sells chefmaster liqui-gel colors:

http://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=4409&keyword=Related%20Items