Does anyone know a recipe to flavor a cake or icing to taste like black licorice? I hate the flavor personally, but I had a customer ask.

Yes, Absinthe. But if you don't plan to sell a lot of it, Absinthe is about $70 a bottle. I don't really like licorice either, but that cake is really good. Maybe you could get the customer to buy the bottle since they like the flavor. There is a blog post on my site and some explanation on the product listing on how I do it.

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought Anise is what you would use, my moms husband really wants me to make him some black licorice cupcakes, (gag) so maybe if he's nice I'll give it a go, I cant imagine it would taste good though, I think he's been watching too much cupcake wars!

I love black licorice. It's is a very Dutch thing. We eat tons of it in our nation and I am personal responsable for a great part of that.
But I don't know of any recipe that resembles the taste of it in something like cake or buttercream.
I cannot image it wil taste good..
We use it in a cough syrup.

Anise is a little bit alike, though not the same. Absint has this anise flavour.

It is definitely a dutch thing. My family loves black licorice so I made some for halloween last year. I melted down the black licorice in a tiny bit of water and added to the cupcake batter. Haven't tried it in buttercream yet but I would think it would work just as well. It does change the texture of the cupcake slightly but my family loves them.

I would use star anise!

Thanks, guys! I appreciate it!

I used to work at an ice cream bar where there was black licorice ice cream to scoop. That stuff has a different flavour than anise.

LorAnn sells "black licorice candy flavour" and it comes in 1 dram bottles should you want to do a tasting. This stuff is good for both cake and icing and it takes only a few drops.