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How to Colour your Icing

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 STEPS TO COLOURING  YOUR ICING

Icing is used to decorate cakes and other pastries. Icing can be coloured into various colours of your choice e.g red, green, blue etc. Colouring Icing be it Butter-cream, Royal Icing or Fondant, is a very easy-to-do task and does not require any expertise. All you have to do is make sure you put in the right amount of colouring and adjust it if you want a darker shade of the colour but make sure you mix in different bowls if you want different colours in order not get the colours mixed up. There are two types of food colours or Icing colours that can be used, Powdered, Liquid or Gel colours. Powdered colours are very cheap and affordable but personally I don't like to use powdered colours because they easily clump together and extra energy is needed to make sure the powdered colour is well incoporated. When using liquid colours, care must be taken to avoid it from making the plain Icing from becoming watery. So little amount of liquid colour is just enough to produce the colour you want. Gel colours on the other hand is the best for colouring Icing as they do not make your Icing runny but these are more expensive than the liquid ones or powdered colour. Use your discretion when purchasing any food colour or Icing colour of your choice.  For directions on how to mix primary colours to get a secondary or tertiary colour see my other posts on "how to mix primary colours to get secondary/tertiary colours".
Below is a step by step process of how to colour your Icing.

Things you'll need:

  • Butter-cream/Royal Icing
  • Food colour/Icing colour (Powdered, Liquid or gel )
  • Bowls/Spoons (this depends on how many colours you want. i used 4 bowls and spoons here)
Procedure: In 4 bowls, put portions of the butter-cream or royal icing according to the amount needed, be it for writing or making patterns.
 Add 2 drops of food colour or Icing colour of different colours you want. Mix thoroughly with a different spoon in each bowl and add in drops to achieve the shade of colour you want if the first application isn't what you looking for. But be careful as you do this in order not to make your Icing runny especially when using liquid food colours. 

   When you have achieved this, scoop the mixture in different piping bags with or without the tips attached to it (see my post on how to make your homemade piping bags) and pipe your heart away, LOL! Its so fun when you decorate a cake because it helps you play with your artistic side. Here is a picture of how I used mine.

Tips and Advice : 
1.When using a powdered colours, mix into a thick paste first with drops of milk or any other liquid before applying to your Icing as this will help it not to clump together easily.   
2. Make sure you use different bowls and spoons for each colouring when mixing.                             

Hope you enjoyed reading this and found it helpful, make your comments, contributions and questions below!

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