There are so many different food colouring options on the market. Let us explain the differences to help you decide what is best for your baking or decorating project with this quick guide.
Basically, there are three types of food colours:
Water based gel, paste or liquid: brands include Americolor Soft Gel Paste, Magic Colour, Over The Top, Colour Mill Aqua Blend, Sprinks, Wilton, Chefmaster and Queen.
Oil based gel or paste: brands include Colour Mill Oil Blend and Americolor Candy Colours
Powder: There are two types.
These can be used to colour pretty much everything: fondant, gum paste, buttercream, cake batter, macarons, meringues, royal icing.
They tend to be more vibrant than oil based gels.
A word of warning though: Do not use in chocolate as it will cause the chocolate to split. It CAN be used in ganache as there is already a liquid being added (usually cream)
It's always good to keep in mind that when adding to your liquid mixtures (royal icing, meringues, cake batter etc), the more liquid you add the more it will change the consistency.
These can be used for most things: buttercream (especially good for higher fat buttercream's such as Swiss Meringue), fondant, gum paste, cake batter, ganache and chocolate.
Do not use in egg white based things such as royal icing, meringues and macarons, as it will deflate the egg and turns your mixtures to soup - not good. The exception is for egg based buttercreams, as there is already so much butter being added.
Water Activated: Can be used for most things, but especially useful for wetter icings and mixtures. Master Elite colours are perfect for macarons, royal icing and meringues. They also work really well in buttercream as long as a small amount of water is added to the powder before adding to the mixture. The colour will deepen over a few hours, so less is more!
Oil Based: Great for chocolate. Will also work in fondant and gum paste, although we recommend to stick with gels and pastes for fondant, as they blend in a lot faster and easier than a dry powder.
With so many options available, it can be confusing to decide which type of colour to use for what, so check out the list below for our recommendations:
American Buttercream (aka ABC): Water based gels, oil based gels, powders mixed with a little water before adding
Swiss Meringue Buttercream (aka SMBC): Oil based gels, or powders mixed with a little water before adding
Ganache: Water based gels or oil based gels
Chocolate: Oil based gels or powders
Royal Icing: Water based gels or water activated powders
Meringues: Water based gels or water activated powders
Macarons: Water activated powders or water based gels - powder is definitely the preferred one here.
Cake batter: Water based gels - they give the most vibrant colour
Fondant and Gum Paste: Water based gels or pastes, or oil based gels. Don't use liquid colour (like the bottle of Queen you can get from Woolies) as it will add too much moisture to the fondant, making it go very sticky and unworkable, especially if you need a deeper colour.
Now that you're a colour expert ;) you will have no troubles finding the right colour to suit your cake, bake and sweet creations!