red food colouring makes pink icing - how to make red???

[LetThemEatCake]

made these dinky little cakes for dd's afternoon tea party this afternoon - ladybirds, or meant to be.

Bought red food colouring for the purpose but it only turned it pink - how do you make red icing?????

Add more food colouring. it will turn red eventually.

pastes, i think. so nigella says. no idea where you get them, soz.

crush more beetles?umm add more colouring.

how about don't add water just add the food colouring

I used the whole bottle!! Just went a deeper shade of pink.
No water, just butter milk and icing sugar.

Will try paste next time. And beetles

Made ds a Lego birthday cake last month, one of the 'bricks' were red, I just used normal food colouring and then added more icing sugar if the icing got sloppy.

I did end up using so much I was quite worried that all the kids would go hyper when they ate it.

Food colouring pastes are marvellous - sooo much better than shitty bottle stuff. You only need a little bit & get really true colours.

I get mine here

Supercook brand red is better than the other generally available supermarket colourings.

If you were using liquid colouring, just keep going! LOL.

Google a local cake deco or sugarcraft shop to find paste colouring. There are ones up and down the country - they will sell the paste or else eBay or else a mail order place like Almond Art or the one previously suggestion.

Sugarflair is the brand I prefer but Squires is the big brand in the sugarcraft world.

I ended up using a whole tub of paste once and just kept getting more lurid pink! Someone suggested adding a bit of black next time but I haven't tried it so don't blame me if it all goes horribly wrong!

OMG How much icing are you trying to colour and feed your kids?! LOL...

I've had the same tub of ruby for a few Christmases now... admittedly I only normally colour ponsiettas, holly berries, santa clauses, choir boys and various other Christmas creatures but I've done a few fire engine and kids cakes but have still only got through about a third of the tub.

If you do get the paste stuff, the pink won't ever go red... the deepest colour it will go is the shade it is sold as. I hope that makes sense...