If you need dusty blue icing like cornflower blue or delphinium blue, you can try to find the exact food coloring, or you can mix it with basic colors that you have on hand. I got a range of colors that could all be called dusty blue by mixing some basic food coloring, so here are my tips.
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Basic blue food coloring.
I started with Americolor Sky Blue, which is a basic light blue color. With that base color I could add a few different colors to see how they would affect the tint of blue.
I mixed it into a vegan American buttercream that was made with shortening only, so I could make air-dry flowers if I wanted to later.
Always make more icing than you think that you need if you’re going to be using a good amount of it on one cake. It’s really hard to match colors if you run out and have to make more, so make a lot to begin with and you won’t have to worry about that part of it!
Dusty blue buttercream frosting using Super Black.
The first color I added was Americolor Super Black, which is basically a lot of different food colorings mixed together. This can be kind of risky because you might be adding colors that you don’t expect, and it can give you a tint that you don’t want.
To prevent that, add the black a tiny bit at a time using a toothpick dipped into the food coloring. Don’t put a toothpick that’s been stuck into icing back into the food coloring, always use a clean one to prevent contaminating the food coloring!
You can dip the toothpick into the food coloring then rest it on a paper towel in between adding it to the icing, but don’t put it back into the bottle after touching it to the icing!
After mixing the icing up and adding a tiny bit of black at a time, I got this nice dusty blue buttercream, and I was happy with that color. The black didn’t make it too green, and adding it a little at a time kept it from getting too dark.
If I had to categorize this, I would probably say that it’s a dark delphinium blue color.
Dusty blue icing using brown.
The next color combination that I tested used brown food coloring mixed into the blue, since I had seen someone say that it was a good way to get a dusty blue icing color. This was Americolor Warm Brown food coloring.
Since brown food coloring is basically made from shades of yellow and red, this pushed the tint of the blue icing in the direction of green more than the back did. (blue + yellow = green.)
Since I added it a little bit at a time, I was able to control the amount of darkening, so it didn’t get too green, and it ended up being a decent dusty blue. This was like a muted cornflower blue, or a pastel blue, but with a tiny bit of green in it.
Dusty blue icing with orange food coloring.
I tried this combination because orange is opposite blue on the color wheel, so I knew that the orange would brown out the blue and make it less bright.
I think that it’s fine on its own, but it’s too green compared to the other two. Since this food coloring (Americolor orange) probably had more yellow than red in it, it turned the icing a little greener than the brown did.
Comparing the three options.
Here are the three dusty blue icing options next to each other so that you can see the comparison. Depending on what you’re looking for, one of these will probably do the trick, and you won’t have to buy specific food colors to start out. Using these basics will give you a dusty blue color that will work for your cake.
And remember that you can combine multiple versions of these icings to get colors that are in-between the individual ones, so if you need something that’s more specific that’s possible, too!
To see how to make hot pink icing with basic food coloring, click here.