Best way to disguise the taste of food coloring in icing?

[meerschweinchen]

DS's request for his birthday cake involves using turquoise buttercream. I bake a fair bit, but don't tend to use food colouring much, as I don't really like it. Last time I used red colouring to make a Valentine's heart cake I could really taste it. Is there anything I can flavour the buttercream with to improve the taste - vanilla essence? chocolate?

What sort of food colouring are you using? Gels give a vivid colour with only using the tiniest amount, so it really doesn't taste of much (if anything)

Red is the worst (beetles you see) so I reckon the blue will be just fine. Especially if you use the gels rather than liquid food colouring.

You could add an essence if you are worried. I made a seven layer rainbow cake (fecking my little pony) and I put peppermint essence in the blue layer. You could do that with icing.

Red is a tricky colour and normal supermarket food colours just make pink so you need more and it tastes bad...

You won't need nearly as much colouring for turquoise but is still use Sugarflair gels or similar. You won't taste it at all.

Ooh, thank you for so many replies so quickly! I knew there'd be some experts on here with the answers.

Yes, I see what you mean about the red. It did just go pink, so I did have to keep adding loads. No wonder it tasted horrible...

I haven't bought the food coloring yet, so it looks like gels might be the way forward then. I guess I just have to experiment, to see whether I can taste it, and if so perhaps add an essence later if necessary.

As an aside, can I actually buy turquoise as a colour or will I have to mix it?

Sugarflair ice blue will give you a good turquoise colour and you won't need too much. The gel colours don't really have a taste.

Have a look at the squires kitchen shop website. That will take care of all of your sugarcraft needs!! And yes, you can definitely buy turquoise!

paste/gel colours

Hydrangea or Bluegrass look like they might work...

Grating white chocolate up as small as you can and mixing it into a warmish buttercream (then allowing it to cool) might work?

Buttercream is a bit yellow to begin with, so you might need a shade that is more blue than turquoise.

Thanks for some great tips. Also thanks for the website recommendation, TMNT, although I'm now tempted to buy loads of extra things I don't really need!

A good point about buttercream being a bit yellow to start with. Hadn't even thought of that. I have made a white chocolate buttercream before, so could try that. It was a bit too sweet, but then the cake is for a children's party so they probably won't mind!

My sister airbrushes her cakes - so no taste!

I have just discovered Wiltons colouring pastes. Amazing and it's true you only need a tiny drop. Try lakeland or Hobbycraft.

I wouldn't worry about the buttercream colour, if it's really well whipped, it's only the slightest hint of yellow. If you really want to counteract it, you need grape violet (another sugarflair colour), and add a tiny drop, it whitens up the buttercream. Try party animal eBay seller, that's where I usually get my colours from.

I would second Lizzie in that the longer you whip your buttercream the whiter it goes. Mine is almost completely white by the time I've given it a good 10 minutes in my Kenwood KMix - lovely and light and fluffy aswell!!