Making cupcakes last weekend, I was surprised at just how challenging it was to tint the frosting the perfect shade. Granted, I was making rainbow cupcakes, so this task was multiplied by six, making the perfect red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Then a friend alerted me to a genius master guide to frosting colors published by Food Network Magazine. Check it out — you'll never be struggling over remedial color wheels again!
The guide was published in their May, 2012 issue, but is still available online. It assumes you're starting with a basic box of red, blue, green, and yellow liquid food coloring, and then provides the ideal number of drops to achieve each color.
Happy frosting!
Read more: Frost by Numbers: How to Make Frosting Colors at Food Network
Related: Looking for Natural Food Coloring? Tips from Ellie Krieger
(Images: Food Network)
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But...but....
...you shouldn't ever use liquid grocery store food coloring to color a frosting. Weak, crappy colors and the water can mess with your frosting. Food Network knows better. Gel colors are sold pretty much everywhere now.
And just show the colors, don't try and zazz them up with goofy names like "Cosmopolitan" or "Raspberry Sorbet" lol
Liquid food coloring? Huh. Well it is "Food Network" magazine, so yeah. Gel or powder please, each container might cost a little more, but for the weekend baker they'll last years.
@jmorri26: they may know better, but judging from the majority of what they throw on their network these days it seems like they think their viewers don't know how to boil water.
Saw this on Pinterest a while back. This looks to be the original source. And no need to click through all those pages..
Ah, just saw that blog posted it from FN Mag. Still an easier way to see them all :)
this guide seems a lot like posting a recipe for cooking bacon: it may seem handy to a very few people who are either clueless about their own abilities, or just plain clueless, but almost everyone has the skill to do it already, so... why make a guide?
assuming they aren't colorblind, does anyone really have such a tentative grasp on color that they wouldn't be able to mix just about any color they wanted without a recipe? as long as you can grasp the concept of primary colors and that, as in painting, it is infinitely easier to add more than to take away, mixing just about any color really should not be rocket science. add a little of the main color (but probably less than you think you'll want), add less of the secondary color(s) than you think you'll need, and ease your way into the color you want. that method also allows for a lot more creativity, because maybe halfway to grass green you find a carefully balanced mint green that you had no idea was so perfect for what you were doing. by throwing in 100 drops of red and mixing, you're abandoning the process entirely to someone at the food network. I guess maybe a some people want convenience over experience and skill, but it just seems like it sucks all of the fun out of creating things.
in my experience, a better tip for color mixing would be that, if you are doing a large project where you may need multiple batches of frosting that very closely match, add very carefully and keep track of exactly what you're adding/how much. outside of that, it is very rare that you will need a color to precisely match something in a way you couldn't accomplish by building it yourself and getting a bit creative with it.