Wilton yellow food coloring comes in a lot of shades to make a variety of orange and yellow frosting colors, so I decided to look at some of them to see what the differences were. I did light, medium, and dark versions of Wilton Lemon Yellow, Golden Yellow, Ivory, and Buttercup.
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Mixing method for coloring buttercream icing.
The Wilton colors that I was using were the little jars of the paste colors, which will last for a long time as long as you don’t contaminate them by getting icing into them. The jars say “gel” but these aren’t the dropper bottles of gel color.
The best way to avoid contaminating the jar is to use toothpicks to get the food coloring out so that you can use a clean pick each time you want to add more color.
I also used to use poultry lacers for this so that I wouldn’t be throwing toothpicks away all the time, but the important thing is to avoid double-dipping in the food coloring!
Start with a little color, and add more as you go. Some of the colors are really strong, so start with less than you think you’ll need and work your way up.
Wilton Lemon Yellow.
Wilton Lemon Yellow is a bright color that gives you a nice saturated yellow.
I mixed some up using toothpicks and starting with a little bit of color then adding more to get progressively darker tones.
The shades that you can get with Lemon Yellow are very pretty and are good for flowers like daffodils and piping details. I used to color fondant with this because it didn’t take much color to get a pretty soft yellow.
Wilton Golden Yellow.
Wilton Golden Yellow is darker than lemon, and it also has a lot more red in it.
Make sure that you use clean toothpicks and spatulas that are free from other colors so that you keep the pure yellow color when you’re mixing everything up.
When you add a lot of the Golden Yellow color it can get really golden, to the point of looking orange. That would take a LOT of food coloring if you’re making a large amount of icing, though. Since I had a small amount it got darker a lot faster. But the orange color does show that there’s a red undertone in this shade.
Click here to see a comparison of blue food coloring.
Wilton Buttercup.
Wilton Buttercup is closer to Golden Yellow than to Lemon Yellow. It has a lot of red in it, so it ends up giving you a color that’s almost brown if you add a lot of it.
The shade that you get with this one is muted and not nearly as bright as the Lemon Yellow color.
Buttercup Yellow is similar to Golden Yellow, but it’s more brown than orange. If I needed a gold color for icing, I would actually use this instead of the Golden Yellow.
Wilton Ivory.
I’m going to include Ivory in this group since it has yellow undertones. This shade of ivory makes a tan color when you add enough to the icing, and it looks like a pale yellowish tan when you add a little.
I’m going to include this in the brown and orange group, too, but it is a warm brown that would be good for autumn wedding cakes.
Americolor Lemon Yellow.
The Americolor Lemon Yellow is a nice bright color that’s a true vivid yellow. You don’t need a lot to get a bright color, this goes a long way.
For an article about the Basic Six Americolor set that includes this yellow, click here.
Americolor Egg Yellow.
I really like the egg yellow color. This one is a lemony yellow if you use a little, and the more that you add, the more egg yolk color comes out. The darkest version was a good dark yellow that wouldn’t need any other colors mixed in to get that color.
Comparing the colors.
Here’s a comparison of some of the yellow colors that Wilton makes. These are all different, and two of them pretty much end up being orange and gold when you add a lot of it to the icing.
I used the lemon yellow to color gumpaste, because it does give you a nice, bright color. A little bit of it makes a softer color as the base, then you can dust the petals for depth of color.
For these callas, I used the Golden Yellow to get a deeper color. The red undertones let you get a darker shade that goes well with different color schemes.
