My cheap-ass, "minimalist", perhaps pathological approach to mixing icing colors
Welcome to the madness of my mind
There are two type of icing makers: Mixers and Buyers. Which are you?
The vast majority of cookie and cake decorators, at some point early on in their careers, buy an intro 8 or 12 pack of gel colors from Wilton or Chefmaster or Americolor. From there, two archetypes emerge: the Mixers and the Buyers. Mixers achieve additional colors by breaking out the color wheel and fiddling, one toothpick’s worth of food coloring at a time, until the perfect hue is achieved or until they collapse into a cursing pile of hysteria. Buyers achieve additional colors by buying them and setting up oh so grammable organization stations.
For some, purchasing dozens of colors is cost prohibitive and so they mix. For others, the additional time required to mix colors doesn’t make sense for their cookie or cake decorating business and so they buy. Neither side is right or wrong. It’s simply a matter of personal preference and practicality.
Why I’m a mixer 🌈
I’m not the biggest cheap-ass in my regular life but I do try and stay protective of my fledgling business’s budget. Not to mention, hoarding runs in my family a bit so I try and be mindful not to collect too many things. On top of all that, I live in New York City so I just don’t have as much space to dedicate to holding food coloring anyway.
Also, I truly enjoy mixing colors! I took exactly one recreational watercolor class and like to think that makes me a color theory expert 🤪. But in all seriousness, I enjoy practicing the skill.
BUT even if you’re a Buyer, you should still learn a little bit about mixing
Even if you’re the type to collect every beautiful hue in the rainbow, having a deeper understanding of mixing colors will come in handy in case a client design requires something you can’t order in time, you run out, or a global pandemic hits and puts stresses on all supply chains.
Mixing food coloring is NOT as simple as the color wheel
Even if you have primary, secondary, and tertiary colors on lock, even if you’ve learned a bit of color theory, there are tricks about food coloring. When mixing colors of light or mixing colors digitally, then yes everything behaves according to the color wheel. BUT physical pigments (and this is true of paint as well as food coloring) are made of real world materials and the materials don’t always behave in alignment with theory. The key is to unpack and understand the ingredients in your food coloring.
How not to make purple
Quick sidebar: I’m gonna mention products/brand by name. I am not sponsored and I am neither encouraging you to or discouraging you from buying any of them. They are all products that I have enjoyed and that have served me well.
One day I ran out of my Chefmaster Violet color. No problem, I thought. Every first grader knows that to make purple, you mix blue and red. I pulled out my Royal Blue and Super Red and bing, bang, boom I had - a BIG MUDDY MESS. The result was gray and dull and not at all purple. What I hadn’t learned yet is that not all reds are created equal.
If I had read the ingredients label of my empty Violet bottle, I would have seen that it is made up of Red 3 and Blue 1. Royal Blue is indeed comprised of Blue 1 but Super Red is actually Red 40, not Red 3. The specific type of red was the difference between a beautiful bright purple and a dark gray disaster.
I went rummaging through my intro Chefmaster color set for an option made of just Red 3 but there weren’t any. Deep Pink is made of the same dreaded Red 40 plus some Yellow 5. Rose Pink is the closest since it does use Red 3 but it also has some Yellow 5 in it and yellow and purple as we know start to turn brown. I also looked at the label for Sky Blue to see if a different kind of blue might help, but Sky Blue is also only made of Blue 1! It’s the same damn thing as Royal Blue!!?!
That night, thank Buddha, I had a neon color set as well and I grabbed the Neon Purple out of it, but without that I would have been SOL.
My problem with pre-mixed colors
This purple betrayal taught me that Red 40 and Blue 1 are a no-no combination. There are plenty more tricks to learn about what food coloring mixes lead to what. There are even guides from the food coloring manufacturers themselves to help out.
But in the same way that food colors aren’t as simple as the color wheel, it also doesn’t have to be as complicated as the above chart. All the dozens and dozens of fancy colors from these companies are actually just 8 or so base food coloring pigments in different ratios.
If you don’t pay close attention to what these colors contain, it could lead to some muddy surprises. You might think “Poppy” and “Ice Blue” together might lead to a nice “Lilac” but NO, there’s some Red 40 lurking in there to ruin your day. The “Regatta Bay” color from The Sugar Art which is included as the blue color in their bundled set actually has some Yellow 5 in there which could affect your color mixing.
Rather than trying to remember stuff like which pinks contain the treacherous Red 40, or always referring back to a chart like the Chefmaster one above, my current icing color strategy is to buy pure pigments only. That way I’m in complete control of exactly what colors are being added.
Also, some colors are the EXACT SAME INGREDIENTS but in different ratios. This kind of rubs me the wrong way. The Sugar Art colors “Red Plum” and “Mona Lisa” are both just Red 3 + Blue 1 in different ratios. I therefore prefer to buy “Hot Pink” (pure Red 3) and Ice Blue (pure Blue 1) and mix them myself.
Remember, I am not saying that my way is right. For some people having the ratios pre-mixed is exactly what works for them. It is in fact faster to use pre-mixed colors if those mixes suit your needs.
The colors I DO buy
So it might seem like I’m telling you to stop buying food colors from these companies or to buy less of them. But that is absolutely not the case. Whether or not you buy the mixes or the pure colors, you’ll ultimately use the same amount of food coloring over time. What is true though is that sticking with just the pure colors is a lower upfront cost if that’s a factor for you.
Right now, I’m transitioning from gel food colors to powdered ones from The Sugar Art (gel v powder is a separate topic that I’m happy to elaborate on if you’re interested, just let me know). Here are all of the The Sugar Art Mater Elite powder colors that I buy that cover all the color bases:
Red Rose: Red 40, Red 40 Lake
Orange: Yellow 6
Sunshine: Yellow 5
Sapphire Sky: Blue 1
Cerulean Blue: Blue 2
Hot Pink: Red 3
White: Titanium Dioxide
Black: Iron Oxide
That’s it! Just 8 colors! When I need hints as to how to mix colors I need, I go look at The Sugar Art’s Elite Color range for a color that looks close to what I need, then I look at the ingredients and use that as a guide. For example, this “Cinnamon” color is made up of Yellow 5, Red 40, and Blue 2 aka Sunshine, Red Rose, and Cerulean Blue.
A quick note about The Sugar Art Master Elite (ME) line vs their Elite Color (EC) line. The general sales pitch is that ME is for mixing into icings like buttercream and royal icing, whereas EC is for painting on top of royal icing or fondant. From what I can tell about how ingredient labels work (and from how, ya know, reading works) the ME colors I listed above seem to be the exact same thing as the EC colors with the exception of white, black and red.
Elite Color Red Rose: Red 40 (no Red 40 lake)
Elite Color White: Titanium Dioxide - TiO2 (seems to be a slightly different compound)
Elite Color Black: Yellow 6, Red 40, Blue 2 (black is probs the only pre-mixed color I’d splurge on)
Welp, there you go, my approach to buying food coloring and mixing icing colors stems from being burned by bad color combos, a perhaps unhealthy obsession with the “efficiency” of only having the exact colors necessary, and the idea of not letting manufacturers “fool” me with their “unnecessary” pre-mixed colors. In other words, it’s…