Frosting Color Mixer: Gel Drops for Any Buttercream Shade

Gel color is unforgiving. One drop too many and your blush pink is bubblegum, your sage is grass, your navy is black. And because buttercream keeps developing for an hour or two after you mix it, the shade in the bowl is not the shade you end up with.

This mixer gives you a starting point: roughly how many drops of gel for your batch size, what the color will look like once it settles, and the one thing that usually goes wrong with that particular shade. Gel strength varies by brand, so treat the counts as a place to begin and stop a shade short of your target.

How to use the frosting color mixer

• Pick your shade. Twenty one of the colors bakers ask for most, including bright white. If you have a swatch or an invitation to match, tap the color circle and it will find the closest one.
• Short on ideas? Tap an occasion across the top. Wedding, Christmas, Halloween, baby shower, birthday or fall each narrow the grid to the shades that go together.
• Set your batch size. Drop counts scale with how much frosting you actually have. Four cups is a standard batch for a two layer eight inch cake.
• Choose light, medium or deep. Light is pastel. Deep is saturated, the kind of color that stains a paper plate.
• Tell it your base. White buttercream (shortening or a whitened base) takes color cleanly. Butter-based frosting is slightly yellow, and that yellow shifts every color you put into it.

The two swatches show you the shade right after mixing and the shade after about two hours. On the deep colors, that difference is the whole ballgame.

Gel, liquid or powder: which food coloring for buttercream

• Gel paste is the answer for buttercream. It is concentrated, so you get deep color without thinning your frosting. Americolor and Wilton are the two most people own.
• Liquid drops from the grocery store are mostly water. To get past pastel you have to add so much that the buttercream breaks or goes runny. Fine for a pale pink, hopeless for red.
• Powdered color is the strongest of the three and adds no moisture at all, which makes it the right pick for black, deep red and anything going on a hot day. It needs a few minutes to dissolve fully, so mix and wait before judging.

The drop counts in the mixer are based on gel. If you are using powder, start with about a third as much. If you are stuck with liquid drops, stay in the light range and do not fight it.

How much gel coloring per cup of frosting

As a rough rule, a pastel takes one drop of gel per cup, a medium shade takes two to three, and a deep shade takes six or more. Red and black sit in their own category and can take two or three times that, which is exactly why they so often taste bitter.

The better habit, especially on a big batch: tint one cup hard, then stir that tinted cup back into the rest a spoonful at a time until the color is right. You get there with less gel and you cannot overshoot.

The colors that keep getting darker

Red, black, navy, purple and hunter green all deepen as they sit. Mix one of these, cover the bowl, and leave it alone for an hour or two before you decide whether it needs more. Most of the frosting disasters people describe are really just impatience.

Two shortcuts worth knowing. For black, start with two tablespoons of sifted dark cocoa and then add black gel. You will use half as much and it will not taste like a marker. Here is the long version: how to make black frosting without food coloring.

For red, use a no-taste red, start from a pink base rather than pure white, and give it the full two hours. More on that in how to make dark red frosting.

White base or butter base

Butter is yellow. That yellow sits under every color you add, which is why blues drift toward teal, purples go muddy and pure white is impossible.

• For cool colors (blue, purple, lavender, gray) add a toothpick dip of violet gel to the plain frosting first. It cancels the yellow before you start.
• For whites and pastels use a shortening-based or whitened buttercream, or beat the butter longer, which lightens it more than people expect.
• For warm colors (peach, coral, gold, brown) the butter base actually helps. Leave it alone.

Common frosting color problems

The color is too dark

You cannot subtract gel. Beat in more uncolored frosting, a half cup at a time, until it comes back. This is the reason to hold a cup of plain buttercream aside before you start coloring.

The frosting looks streaky

Gel needs more mixing than feels necessary. Scrape the bowl down, including the bottom, and beat for another full minute on low. If it is still streaky, the gel was added to cold frosting. Let it come to room temperature.

The pastels look gray or dirty

Too many colors in the mix, or a butter base pulling against a cool shade. Start over with fewer gels, and use the violet trick above.

The black or red tastes bitter

That is the sheer volume of gel. Cocoa for black, a no-taste red for red, and powdered color instead of gel when you need serious depth.

Single color walkthroughs

For a few shades, we have a full post with the exact method:

• Pink frosting
• Dark red frosting
• Black frosting, without the bitterness
• Purple frosting
• Peach icing
• Skin-toned icing

Questions people ask

How do I get a true red buttercream without a bitter taste?

Use a no-taste red gel, start from a pink-tinted base so you need less of it, and let the frosting rest for two hours. Powdered red is the other route and adds no liquid at all.

Why did my frosting color change overnight?

Gel color keeps developing, and it develops most in deep shades. Mixing to the exact color you want means waking up to something darker. Stop one shade short of your target.

Can I color cream cheese frosting the same way?

Yes, but use less. Cream cheese frosting is softer and takes color faster, and the extra liquid in gel will loosen it more than it loosens buttercream.

How far ahead can I color frosting?

A day or two in the fridge is fine, sealed. Bring it back to room temperature and beat it smooth before you use it, and expect it to look slightly deeper than when you put it away.

Do I need separate colors for every shade?

No. Red, blue, yellow, brown, black and violet will mix almost everything on this chart. The mixer tells you the combination for each one.

Now put the frosting down

You have been standing at the mixer for an hour. The Dessert Bar will pick you something to drink out of 62 recipes, hot or iced, depending on the season and what you are craving.