Black Buttercream

[Crabeyes]

Im making a black frosted cake with a red drip. Are they're any fellow bakers out there who can give me some tips on black buttercream? Everytime ive tried it ends up a metallic grey! Thanks!

There 🙄

What gel do you use to dye the butter cream? I ordered online before and it was like water. Lakeland have good stuff
Could you possibly add melted chocolate to the mix to help?
I've only ever added brown to make a ganache (not buttercream) look more chocolate coloured.
I did once dye white fondant black before - a whole tube of gel paste and a couple of hours lost from my life

Gel food colour usually I just cant get it black! Do you think making the buttercream chocolate so its darker will help?

When I have used these, I had good results with Sugarflair colours. Liquorice is the black one.

Chocolate buttercream with the black dye will absolutely help.

Could you use black fondant instead?

I would only ever use pre dyed black fondant, if you go that route. It's the only colour I ever buy. Wilton gels are very good although I've never tried black buttercream.

It's quite difficult to make black buttercream unfortunately. Either chocolate buttercream or ganache with dark chocolate, and then black gel food colouring (although you will still need a lot of colouring!). Starting with the base colour of dark brown will mean you need less colouring than for plain buttercream, so it will taste far nicer and the consistency won't be messed up as much. Also as the base colour would be brown it wouldn't have the grey tones you said you usually get.

There's probably videos online with better detail about it. Good luck!!

As above, black pre-coloured fondant or V. Dark Chocolate ganache with black gel colour is your best option here. Wilton is my go to gel colour brand, americolor is also very good quality.

Standard buttercream will taste vile in my experience unless it’s heavily flavoured with something very strong and even then, it’ll look and taste subpar.

There is such a thing as black cocoa to combine with gel colour which is also an option to make black chocolate buttercream, but it’s more of a bitter Oreo flavour rather than a true chocolate apparently - not sure what it’s like to obtain it though as I’ve never purchased.