If you need Hot pink or dark pink buttercream frosting, you can try to find the exact food coloring, or you can mix it with basic colors that you have on hand. I made a pink that could be used as a hot pink by mixing some basic food coloring, so here are my tips.
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Start with regular pink food coloring.
I started with Americolor Deep Pink, which is a basic pink color. Starting out with a pink base color is important because if you use red it’s going to make a pink that’s more on the orange side. Pink food coloring is a little more blue, so it balances that orange tint out.
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!
Add some purple food coloring.
Hot pink is an intense pink that has a lot of purple in it, so you should start tinting it with that.
The first color I added was Americolor Regal Purple, which is a good purple color that will start moving the pink in the “hot pink” direction and will make the color darker and more intense.
To add the color, use 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 purple at a time, I got this darker and bluer version of the original pink, and I was happy with that color.
It still needed to be darker and brighter, but it’s going in the right direction.
To see how to make dusty blue food coloring, click here.
Add more pink.
Now that I had it going in the direction of purple, and the base color was getting more intense, I added more pink.
At this point you can add a lot of pink because the base color isn’t white and the color will mix in to be darker than the first mix.
Mix this up and you’ll have a brighter pink that has a purple undertone. It’s more blue than the original mix but it’s not as intense as a hot pink needs to be, so keep adding color.
Add some red food coloring.
At this point I added a little bit of red food coloring to deepen the color and make it a little more orange.
The color is getting deeper and it’s still pink, but it’s not hot pink, and I’m going to have to keep mixing it.
I think that it’s fine on its own, but it’s not deep enough yet. So let’s add some more pink.
To see how to make coral colored buttercream, click here.
Add more pink.
At this point you can add more pink to deepen the color, but there will come a point where the color isn’t going to change too much even if you add a lot more. This is close to a hot pink but I’d call it a deep pink. The key to deepening this would be to let it sit out, because the food coloring would emulsify over time and get darker on its own.
You can also try the microwave method of heating some icing up for ten seconds (or less depending on how much icing you have) but you need to be careful with that. Too much heat can cook the sugar, and it will ruin your icing. This is the difference I got when I heated the icing for ten seconds, but it did almost cook it! (Left is unheated, right is after heating.)
I’ve seen videos of people totally melting the icing then putting it in the fridge to harden it up, but that’s going to affect the texture of the icing. It could work if you’re careful, but test it out first to see how it works for you. Melting the icing will probably work better for a shortening-based buttercream than it will for an all-butter icing.
This is what I came up with, which is between a dark pink and a hot pink, but it would work. Depending on what you’re looking for, this will probably do the trick, and you won’t have to buy specific food colors to start out. If you want a really super bright pink, though, you might have to buy a specifically-designated neon pink or electric pink color to start out with.