Purple sponge cake disaster

[fabulousmrbeagle]

Having a real cake disaster!
I bought some 'violet' food colouring (looks more mauve than violet).
I added this to (a test portion) of my cake mix (a fairly bright yellow colour with the butter and free range eggs in there).
The resulting colour was a horrid murky grey, not the bright colour I would have liked, either a pastel or a neon would have been fine!

Does anyone have any experience with making coloured sponges who can offer advice?

The colour mixed with white icing wasn't too bad, although not the bright girly violet I was after.

I did a rainbow cake and the purple sponge was the worst. Very dull and murky looking. A bit better when it cooked. Someone told me that the little pits of paste colouring are much brighter than the traditional ones.

Yes what food colouring did you use? You need a paste and for purple I've had a good result with Americolor, I got it on EBay.

Well I've been rather put off colouring my sponge after trying to make pink cake at the weekend and had both of them sink. Never had it happen to me in my life before.
Used the gel stuff from the supermarket, won't be doing that again in a hurry.

I use the Wilton gels and the purple in my rainbow cake was fine.

The gel stuff from the supermarkets are rubbish, I generally use Wilton or sugarflair paste.

I use sugarflair (from eBay) and although the other colours are great the purple can be a bit dodge, so I tend to use a smaller amount. I've heard the americolor purple is better.