Making black icing is difficult because of the amount of food coloring you need to add to get a good, dark black color. There are a bunch of methods to make black icing floating around online, so I decided to try some of them.
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Method one: Just use food coloring.
For this test I used Americolor Super Black food coloring for all of the food coloring that I added. It gives you a good dark grey and a good black if you add enough of it, but it will take a ton of food coloring if you have a lot of icing.
The downside of this is obviously that you’ll need to use a lot of food coloring, and you’ll also probably dye everyone’s mouths who eats the cake because of that.
You can use the method that I use to cover cakes in dark icing to minimize that (read about it here) and you can also get the icing to a good dark color then let it sit overnight to develop the color more. Leaving the icing to deepen in color, then stirring it can make it darker.
Method two: Black cocoa powder.
For this trial I used black cocoa powder, which darkened the icing a lot without using any food coloring at all. However, it was definitely a very dark brown, not black.
Cocoa powder is naturally brown, but black cocoa looks black until you mix it into whatever you’re mixing it into. They use it to make Oreos, which people think of as being black, but they’re really a dark brown color.
You can see the difference in cookies when you bake them using regular and black cocoa in this article: Cocoa comparison
I mixed some black cocoa into white buttercream icing (see the amounts above), and it took a lot of the cocoa to make the icing dark enough to make it look black. When you looked at it closely, though, it was a super dark brown color, not black.
You’ll also need to add more liquid to the icing if you use this method, because the cocoa will dry out the icing.
Once I got it to a really dark brown color, I added some of the Americolor Super Black food coloring to it. That turned it black by changing the tint to a more blue hue instead of being so brown, which is on the yellow side.
I’d say that this method was pretty good, with way less food coloring being used to get the final black color. The only downside is that the icing will taste like chocolate, which isn’t bad unless you’re using it on a cake or cupcakes where that will be a conflict in flavors.
If the chocolate flavor won’t matter then the black cocoa is a good option, though, because it won’t need as much food coloring to get the final color.
Method three: Tint the icing first.
This method uses all food coloring, but it relies on the fact that black food coloring is a combination of colors, and most of them have a green or blue base. If you tint the icing that color, you’re prepping it to take the black food coloring “easier” and darken faster.
To start, put some of the food coloring in a little water to see what color forms in the water. In this photo you can see that the tint that comes out is a little green. Or maybe you can’t depending on how the computer is set up, but trust me, it was green. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but most black food color that I’ve run across has a green tint.
To start, mix dark green food coloring into the icing to get a good base color. By doing this you can use less black at the end, but this will still dye people’s mouths, so try to use the darkest green that you have so that you can use less of it.
Once you get a decent dark green color, add the black food coloring little by little to get a black color.
I used leaf green Americolor food coloring for this, so it was a little brighter than dark green would be. Even so, one drop made it pretty dark.
If I let the icing sit overnight, like I did in method 1, it might have been dark enough the next day. I didn’t want to wait though, so I added more black and it came out really well.
So this is a good method, but it still uses more food coloring than you might want to use.
Heating method.
I’ll add an additional method here, but I wouldn’t use this one unless you have to, because you can ruin the icing.
There are videos of people heating bowls of icing in a microwave then stirring it with an immersion blender after leaving it in the fridge overnight. You can try that, but leaving it in the fridge without heating it will deepen the color anyway.
The risk that you’re taking by heating the icing is to “break” it, and you might also cook the sugar so that it crystallizes.
I tried this with some red icing, and the crystallization is what happened to me! The icing separated because of the heat, and when I stirred it, it had little chunks of cooked sugar in it.
I’d avoid this method because you don’t know if you’ll be able to fix the icing if it separates, and if you get it too hot it definitely won’t be smooth.
Leaving it in the fridge overnight will darken it, and it’s a lot safer than trying to heat icing that shouldn’t be heated!
My conclusion after trying these methods is that the black cocoa will be the best as long as you’re okay with the chocolate flavor because you’ll eliminate a lot of food coloring.
Less food coloring means less staining of your guests’ teeth, and it also helps keep the icing from tasting bitter. That can happen with too much food dye.
So as long as the chocolate flavor isn’t going to be a problem, try the black cocoa method to avoid the problems that come with using a lot of food coloring!
