Unlike standard gel colours, Colour Mill is an oil-based dye, allowing you to better colour buttercream, Swiss Meringue and even chocolate! The secret is in how the colour binds to butter, fat, and oil.
The unique formula of Colour Mill, being oil-based, binds to the fats and oils in your baking. This creates a deeper, richer colour that water-based gel colours can’t achieve as they can’t bind with fat and are therefore are less effective.
Water and oil can’t mix together, so if half your buttercream is butter (fat) your gel colour (water) will only be able to dye the sugar, essentially only colouring half your buttercream - which means you have to use twice as much colour.
By using an oil-based dye like Colour Mill the colour is able to be fully dispersed throughout sugar, butter, eggs, and oil. Colouring every element means your buttercream (or cake batter, meringue, etc) will have a deeper, more vibrant colour, with less colouring!
Less colouring also means the taste of your baking won’t be as altered as it would be with standard gel colours.
Colour Mill has replaced all the water elements with baking friendly oils which mix through your batters and buttercream much better as water will repel from the fats in baking. Colour Mill colours are also put through a specialised micro-milling process which means it is both grain and streak free! Micro pigments colour more effectively which means you can use less colouring. Oh and they're also free of fillers and gums!
If you have your heart set on using a particular gel colour, but struggle to get a vibrant colour when mixing it with your buttercream and baking, using Colour Mill Booster will help it emulsify and bind with the oils, creating a deeper colour and stretching your gel colour further.
You can also use it to colour chocolate by mixing three parts Booster to one part gel colour.
Note: If you are using Colour Mill colours to dye, you do not need Booster. This product is designed to improve less effective products.
Like the other colours Colour Mill White dyes both the sugar and butter in buttercream and baking, which gives you a brighter white with less colour. Our own Bryony, Queen of Crumbs, tested the white extensively and gives it her tick of approval!
Unlike titanium dioxide it won’t make your buttercream graining or leave a nasty taste.
