Baking a cake.

[ThedementedPenguin]

Hi, first time posting here.

I'm baking my sons first birthday cake. I had planned on doing the cake mix in different colours. I want them to be really vibrant. (Sp?) Im thinking red, blue and another colour not sure which.

So can I use just normal food colouring? Or is there something better?

Thanks for the help.

Gel food colouring is better for vibrant colours. Most supermarket do them now. I often do multi coloured cakes. Blue, red, orange, green, yellow. It looks amazing when cut.

If I want to colour the cake I use a colour paste which I get on baking shops on eBay . I find that liquid colouring can affect the texture as you have to add a lot to get vibrancy . A paste comes in a tiny pot and is so concentrated you have to add it in tiny amounts on the end of a cocktail stick

If you want really vibrant colours you need to use trex instead of butter. It's white so it makes for a much whiter mix which takes the colour better. Adding a lot of liquid food colouring into a sponge can make it rather heavy. The gels are better as much more concentrated. You can also use trex for the butter cream which is great to get it white.

Misswimpy, how does trex affect the flavour in the cake? And more importantly the buttercream? Theres a thread recently on here about using trex, interesting!!