Black icing for cakes  

I made my own icing by using ordinary black food colouring mixed with a dark chocolate flavour icing. The cakes are great, the icing tasting of chocolate but it's dark black. Give it a try

It depends on the type of colouring they use. Alcohol/liquid based colouring (the easiest to find in shops) they would need to use so much to get a black colour it would taste too bitter. The same goes for deep reds, greens and blues.

I have however come across cakes with black icing that were edible (without the bitter taste). To get that black icing they use a special concentrated gel based colour. The icing is often coloured first with a darker base colour such as green or blue then the concentrated black is added. You only need a drop or two to get black and this means that there is no bitter taste. It also means that the icing is not thinned by too much colour.

It is also not too healthy to make deep colours like red, blue, green and black out of the liquid based colours. You would need so much to get the desired colour and there are questions about the safety of synthetic food colours being used in such high quantities. Using gel based colours is tastier and safer!

What I know about bitter chocolate. Bitter has to do with not putting milk, sugar and salt in it. Milk and sugar are white and tend to make it look lighter brown. But salt is the thing that actually takes the bitterness out and it would not be enough to make it look brown. Since chocolate is brown, I'm not sure I know what they put in that is black. Sorry I'm not much help.

It's been three weeks, so what did you decide to do? How did it work out?