I'm going to share my most useful hacks
for tinting frosting for tricky colours like black, red and navy.
Black frosting is the most common struggle so let's start with that. There are two
secret ingredients here: chocolate chips and cocoa powder. Put the chocolate chips
in the microwave for 30 seconds at 70% power so they don't overheat and seize and then stir the
chocolate until it's smooth with no lumps. Leave it to cool to room temperature. Meanwhile add
hot water to the cocoa powder a little bit at a time until it makes a thin paste with no lumps. I
use about two tablespoons of cocoa powder and one tablespoon of water for every cup of buttercream.
When the chocolate and cocoa mixture are at room temperature add them to your frosting. I like to
do this before adding the milk or cream in my 4 Minute Buttercream recipe so that the buttercream
is much stiffer than it would normally be because the liquid cocoa powder and melted chocolate will
thin out the buttercream a lot, making it silky smooth and easy to spread or pipe. If you've
already added milk or cream then the chocolate and cocoa powder might make the buttercream too runny.
Now add black food colouring and I definitely recommend gel colours over liquid colours
because they're much more concentrated. I buy little bottles of coloured gels but for black
I use bigger bottles since you need so much more gel. You'll need a generous squirt of gel but not
nearly as much as you'd need if you were using liquid colours. Stir it in and you're aiming for
a colour that's darker than gray but not yet a true jet black. Cover the bowl with plastic
wrap and leave it for an hour for the colour to develop and darken and ta-daa! A true black
buttercream frosting! These first two hacks will work for any dark colour of buttercream like navy
blue. Start by adding chocolate to your frosting, ideally melted chocolate and cocoa powder but you
can use one or the other if you don't have both. The darker the brown you start with,
the less colour you'll need to add later. Adding just blue to brown will make a fairly dark blue
but to make navy add some black as well. Go back and forth between blue and black, adding a bit at
a time until the colour is almost as dark as you want it to be. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap,
leave it for an hour and voila! A beautiful deep navy buttercream! If you're struggling to achieve
the colour shown on a bottle of gel it's probably because you're not using enough gel. Gels are
concentrated but you do need to use a generous amount for really bright and bold colours.
Covering the bowl and letting the frosting rest gives any gel colour a chance to develop. Look at
the difference just one hour makes for this orange buttercream! Red frosting can be really tricky but
just like with any other colour, use a good amount of red gel and then you can make the red frosting
brighter by covering the bowl to let it rest for an hour. Another hack that works really well with
red buttercream is to heat it. Scoop up no more than a third of the buttercream and microwave it
for just 10 seconds. It will melt and get much darker. Add the melted buttercream to the rest
of the red buttercream and mix it together and it will look lumpy at first but leave it to come
to room temperature or speed up the process by putting it in the freezer for five minutes to make
a beautiful deep red frosting that's silky smooth. A common question is how to avoid the bitter taste
caused by using lots of gel. As well as limiting the amount of gel you use by using these methods,
another hack is to add more flavour to coloured frosting. Add a bit of clear vanilla or almond
extract or even other flavours like lemon or mint, depending on the flavour of your cake of course!
The flavour will disguise any taste of the gel in the buttercream. All I taste in this bright
red cake is the almond flavoured red frosting and my deliciously moist Perfect Chocolate Cake
and yummy Oreo filling. I hope this tutorial has been useful! I share everything I know
about buttercream in my online MasterCourse, The Basics of Buttercream, where you'll learn how to
make buttercream, troubleshoot any issues like graininess, air bubbles, yellow buttercream and
also how to check and adjust the consistency for piping and frosting, how to frost a cake
with super smooth frosting and sharp edges, how to store buttercream and how to use it for lots
of stunning unique cake decorating techniques. To take the MasterCourse on my cake school click the
link up here in the top of the screen or go to www.britishgirlbakes.com Thank you for watching!