Here is the problem with coloring buttercream. The frosting in the bowl is not the frosting you end up with. Gel keeps developing for an hour or two after you mix it, so the shade you stop at is a shade lighter than what shows up on the cake.
So we built something to take the guessing out of it: a free frosting color mixer that tells you how many drops of gel to use for your batch, and shows you what the color will look like once it settles.
What it does
- 22 shades, from blush pink and dusty rose to navy, hunter green, pumpkin orange and bright white.
- Drop counts that match your batch. Tell it how many cups you are tinting and the numbers scale, down to a toothpick dip on a single cup and up to teaspoons on a big batch.
- Light, medium or deep. Same shade, three depths.
- White base or butter base. Butter is yellow, and that yellow shifts every color you put on top of it. The mixer accounts for it and warns you when it matters.
- Two swatches. One for right after mixing and one for two hours later. On reds, purples and navy that gap is the whole problem.
- A color picker. Tap the circle, pick the color off an invitation or a swatch, and it finds the closest frosting shade.
Pick by occasion
If you know the event but not the colors, tap one of the presets across the top and the grid narrows to shades that belong together: wedding, Christmas, Halloween, baby shower, birthday, gender reveal or fall.
The part most people get wrong
- Red and black take more gel than you think, which is exactly why they taste bitter. Start black with two tablespoons of dark cocoa and use a no-taste red.
- Deep colors keep darkening. Mix, cover the bowl, walk away for an hour, then decide.
- You cannot subtract gel. Hold back a cup of plain buttercream before you start, so you have something to lighten with.
Try it on a frosting post
Open any of our frosting recipes and you will find a shortcut version partway down: tap a shade, see the drops, carry on with the recipe. Start with Wilton’s buttercream or the Great American Cookie icing.
And when the frosting is finally the right color and you are done for the night, The Dessert Bar will pick you something to drink out of 62 recipes.
