The Power of Colour

Cake Decorating, Icing Cookies and frosting a cupcake is more exciting with color. However with so many colour’s to choose such as gel, paste, liquid and powder where does one start. Your base color to choose will be some what dependent on what you are putting color into. The Chefmaster colour line offers a highly concentrated, vibrant colors mix easily and provide consistent tones without altering the texture of your product. Roxy&Rich colour’s are powder based and will not change consistency to your fondant, chocolate or gum paste pieces.

If you were to colour icing or cake batter we suggest a gel colour as it is more concentrated. It also has less water in the gel compared to a liquid airbrush color and should not effect the medium you are working with. Do not use a gel/water based color to tint chocolate. The water in the gel will cause your chocolate to cease and then turn your chocolate very thick. Use a candy colour that is oil based or a powder form to change the colour of your chocolate.

My favorite buttercream, to make is Italian however compared to a simple buttercream recipe it does not take color on as well. It can be harder for the Italian Buttercream to absorb the color to turn vibrant. When making Italian buttercream a paddle attachment is best as you will not incorporate a large amount of air into your icing. As much as we love air to breathe, air in icing can cause those little air pockets on the side of your cake or when piping a cupcake. To color The Italian buttercream a concentrated gel works great. Some of you might have found if you add to much colour to your icing you have a strong bitter after taste.. Yuck !! There is nothing worse than terrible tasting icing because of the food color. Here is a small trick you might find will help. As I add gel to the icing I start with a paddle attachment and only add a bit of colour at a time. The colour will deepen as it mixes however if you need a darker shade add a touch more. When I am getting close to the colour desired but am not quite getting the results I want I change to a whisk attachment. It works great. I am not sure if it is the extra metal attachments beating the icing or a touch of air or both. But a whisk attachment will do wonders to darken your icing colour and incorporate the color better than a paddle attachment. I know it sounds like I am contradicting myself as I mentioned lots of air in icing can be fatal when icing  your cake, however a quick 2-3 minute spin on medium speed with brighten your pale pink to bright pink in no time and should not add enough air pockets to cause problems. Once you are happy with your icing the fun begins with decorating your masterpiece.