Making orange icing seems like it would be pretty basic, but you need to do it carefully because red is such a strong color. If you follow these steps you’ll be able to make orange frosting with basic food coloring and not end up with something that’s too dark.
This article includes affiliate links that will pay a commission if they’re used to purchase something. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Which orange color do you want?
Orange is a color that has a lot of shades, so make sure you and the client (if you’re making the cake for someone else) is thinking of the same color that you are. This is really important because if a customer has a shade in mind and you make a different one, they won’t be happy. I use a paint color fan deck to find the colors that I want to end up with, but for orange you need a basic yellow and red to make most of the shades.
The easiest thing would be to get some food coloring that was already orange. They’re already mixed to give you the tint that you want, but if you don’t have them, you can use red and yellow to mix them.
You can get Americolor food coloring at Oasis Supply Company or Amazon. On Oasis Supply, you can use discount code REMEMBER10 to get 10% off your order!
Mixing the icing.
I started with Americolor Lemon Yellow and Super Red. I added the yellow in without worrying about it, because yellow is the base color and the red is going to give you the tint of orange depending on how much you add. You don’t need to be too delicate with the yellow unless you want a light pastel orange or a pale color. If that’s the case, use a little yellow and start with a light yellow color as the base.
Mix the icing up and make sure that all of the color is incorporated. When you have a good yellow color base, it’s time to start adding the red in carefully.
Add the red food coloring.
Use a toothpick to get a little bit of the red so that you can start making the orange CAREFULLY. Red is such a strong color, it will change the color dramatically fast if you add too much at once, so don’t do that. Use a toothpick to add a tiny bit of color at a time. If you have a large pot of icing that you’re coloring all at once you don’t need to be so delicate, but you still want to add a lot less red than you did of the yellow.
Add a little red and set the toothpick aside for later. Don’t put the toothpick into the food coloring after you put it in the icing, or it will contaminate your food coloring!
Mix this up and check the color.
Add more red and keep working for the orange color.
This is the amount that I used to get the next round, because I’m still being careful!
Mix it all up and make sure to scrape the bowl and the spatula well so that any food coloring that’s lingering on the surfaces will get mixed in. If you don’t, you’ll get streaks of color in the final icing and that can ruin the cake.
Here we have an orange color but it’s still pretty yellow, so I’m going to keep adding red.
I added more red this time, because once you get the color started and you see how the amount of red that you’re adding works, you can get a little more aggressive.
Stir it up really well, scrape the bowl and spatula, and make sure that all of the color is mixed in.
This ended up with a good orange color that was dark enough for my liking. I could have stopped with the lighter color, or anywhere in between by not adding as much red in between the two, but this one ended up pretty well.
If you want to take this a step further and make burnt orange icing, click here to read how to do that!
How to make orange icing video:
You can watch me making it here: