Welcome to how to cook that I'm Ann Reardon
and today I'm going to show you how to make bright colors out of fondant, how to make black and
how to make every color you'll ever need from only buying 5
Gel colors, you don't need to go out and buy all of them
I have a hundred grams of fondant or three and a half ounces here
so to start with we're going to color this red and we're going to add just
one drop of red and then a bit more and then a bit more so that you can see how much
Coloring you need to get bright colors. Now, this fondant is really hard because it's cold here at the moment
So to make it softer and easier to mix I'm gonna put it in the microwave for just five
Seconds only. No more for this small amount or you'll end up with it completely liquid
the first thing I do when I'm going to color fondant is wash my hands really well and
Dry them and then spray on some spray cooking oil
This is just canola oil and rubbing it on your hands means the fondant won't stick to your skin
It also means if you do get any food color on you, it comes off a lot easier
Now firstly I'll show you what one drop of red - 100 grams or three and a half ounces of fondant
Turns out like. Add the color to the very center and then fold it over and seal it all the way around the edges
Fold it over again and keep folding it until you can just see the color is about to break through there
Now if it does break through it's going to go on your fingers. It's going to go on the counter
so at this stage
I like to get a plastic food bag and put it inside
And then massage it really well, this helps to not get too much color on your hands, which is important
Especially if you're about to film a video
So that's why I like to put it in the bags like this and keep mixing until you can't see any more colour
Sticking to the bag once it's all on the fondant and there's no liquid on the bag
Then it's okay to take it out and massage it through the fondant just using the palms of your hands to get that color really
Evenly mixed through and as you can see mixing takes a while
So knowing how much color to add in the first place will help you not waste your time
Mixing and then adding a little bit more and mixing again adding a bit more and mixing again
Now you can see here adding one drop is not going to make your fondant red. It's a pale pinky color
Now to our next load of fondant, I'm going to add half a ml of color
Now, I'm using a medicine measuring here to get this accurate and you're gonna add it to the center of the fondant
Just like we did before and again
I'm using a hundred grams or three and a half ounces
So you can scale up these amounts of coloring according to how much fondant you need
When I'm adding more color like this instead of just folding it over
I like to mix it in with a fork first and that just seems to make it mix in faster
It kind of makes a paste of the fondant color rather than it just being the gel which just bursts out
everywhere and it's just harder to mix it in fold it over get everything off your fork and then you
Definitely just need to put this in a bag straight away
unless you want your hands to be colored a different color and then keep mixing it and
squeezing it and mixing it until no color is sticking on to the inside of the bag and then you can take it out and
Massage it between your hands
Now you can see that it's given us a deeper color
If you add a few more drops at this stage
It will make no difference if you want to have an impact on the color
You're going to have to double the amount of color. That's right. Not just a few more drops
So this time I'm going to add one ml
To a hundred grams or three and a half ounces of fondant so you can see what that looks like
So one mil double of what we did before mix it around with your fork
Fold it over put it in the bag massage it it's so much easier in fast-forward
You keep your hands and your counter clean, and then finally give it a good massage
And now you can see we have red fondant
So we started with a hundred grams or three and a half ounces of fondant each time
Plus gel food coloring and we're comparing one drop versus half a ml versus one ml
So there is your comparison one drop gives you a pale pinky color
Half a mil you're getting a reddish color
But it's still a little bit pale
1 ml per a hundred grams is going to give you that bright deep color
So that's about a quarter of a teaspoon
for those of you who are not familiar with mls a quarter of a teaspoon is
1.25 mls so that will give you about this color
Half of that will give you this color and one drop will give you the pale one
The next thing to consider is what brand of colorings should you buy there are so many today
I'm going to compare four of them. There's Wilton that one's really well-known
This is Progel, Chefmaster and then Artisan
now for each of these pink gel food colors
You take a hundred grams of fondant and add one mil of food coloring and mix them in and the results you get are
Remarkably different one to the other
So you can see there if you're after a really bright
pink you're going to need to go for the Progel or the Wilton. The Chefmaster and the Artisan are
Completely different shade no matter how much you add you're not going to get that bright pink color
The other weird thing I've noticed with pink
coloring is that it tends to fade in the light. So to test these brands
I'm wrapping one end in foil to protect it from the light and then we'll leave that for a couple of hours to see if
They fade or not
You don't want to spend hours
decorating a cake and
covering it and then you end up at the end of the day with it being a different color to what it was when you
mixed the fondant
Two hours later if we unwrap them the artisan one
You can see there is quite a difference between this tone and that one so it's definitely faded
Just over two hours and that's quite a big difference in two hours. If we look at the Chefmaster one, that is also faded
Progel that color is actually pretty steady
It's slightly less but not really noticeable. And then finally the Wilton one
There's a very slight difference but it's not really noticeable
I have had Wilton pink that came in their color-right set fade
Really badly before but the colors that are in the pots seem to be more stable
I haven't noticed this problem with any other colors so far just with pink
Let me know if you've had any colors fade on you. Now before we move on from pink
Lots of people have asked me can I use liquid food coloring instead of gel food coloring?
So for this I've added one ml of the Queen rose pink liquid coloring to a hundred grams of fondant. And yes
It works fine to color it pink but you can see it's not as intense as the gel coloring was
Also, it can make the fondant a bit sticky
So with this one, I added a teaspoon of extra icing sugar to stop it sticking everywhere
So, yes, you can use the liquid color
You'll just need to use more of it to get a brighter color and too much liquid will make your fondant sticky but to fix
That you just need to add more icing sugar to your fondant
Now to make black fondant lots of people struggle with this one again
It's the amount that you need to add
you just need to add one ml of black gel food coloring per 100 grams or three and a half ounces of fondant and
Mix it in how I showed you if you don't add enough you'll end up with grey and not black
so most people just start adding a little bit and they add more and more and more and more and you're mixing and mixing and
Mixing and if you just add the right amount at the beginning, it'll be a lot less frustrating
Now for all your other colors, you only need five colors of gel coloring to get everything
So you'll need black and for that I used artisan midnight black
magenta or a deep pink and I used the pro gel pink for that a
Bright yellow, I made that using artisan sunshine yellow again
it's 1 ml per 100 grams or 3 and a half ounces for all of these and
Cyan which I made using artisan Azure blue
Now we can mix those together to make every other color except for red. So you'll need to buy red as well
Let's mix some colors. Now. If you have two parts of yellow and you add one part of cyan you get this nice
bright green color
It's really nice and fresh there if you want more of a yellowy green
Then just add two parts yellow to a quarter part of cyan and mix mix mix
You know that mixing takes the longest and you have a nice Caterpillar green there
If you mix two parts of pink and one of cyan together, what do you think? You'll get I
Hope you said purple because you get a really deep purple
If you want a lighter purple, you can just add white to lighten that down the important thing to know here
Is that mixing pink with cyan makes purple, but if you mix red with cyan, you won't get purple
I'll leave that one there and show you what I mean. If we have one cyan with two Reds. Here we go
Let's mix them together mix mix mix. What do you think? We're gonna get you can probably see there
We are not getting purple
we're getting like a dirty grey brownie color and that's why you need your pink or your magenta color as your base and
Not red
Just like in your printer you start with cyan magenta yellow and black to make all of the colors to make orange
take two yellows and one pink and mix them around together mix mix mix and
boom a nice clean bright orange
So what if you want brown well for that you'll need two parts yellow one pink and half a cyan and don't worry
I am going to write all of this down for you as a chart on how to cook that.net
With drops and teaspoons. So if you start with white fondant
How many drops of cyan how many drops of yellow will you need to add to make these colors?
What do you get if you mix two say in with one yellow?
quickly think of your predictions before it mixes
Yes, you get a nice aqua green
I hope you got that one right - and what if I wanted more of like my skin tone color?
There are so many different skin tones, but I'm gonna try and make my skin tone for that
We're gonna need some pink some yellow and a teeny bit of cyan and mix those together
Now it's too dark
So I'm going to add some white to make it paler and a bit more white and that gives me a pretty good base
Color that looks pretty similar to my skin color if we just used some powdered food coloring to add some shading
That would be pretty spot-on
So with just the five gel colors cyan pink black yellow and red
You can make every color that you need. You don't need to buy lots of other colors
All of these ones are just made mixing those gel colors together. There's no other food coloring here
So I'll put a chart on the howtocookthat.net website
for you that tells you exactly how many drops or teaspoons of each color you need to add to make each of these colors and
Remember if you don't like the taste of fondant
You can also add clear essences to flavor it so peppermint essence and lemon essence
Work really Well fondant just tastes really sweet
if you imagine eating any of your lollies your M&Ms any of that candy without
Flavoring it would just taste really sweet and you wouldn't like it
And if you add a flavoring to it, it will be good
but they don't add flavoring to it before you buy it because it might not go with your cake flavor so you can
Depending what flavor cake you do flavor your fondant to go with it
I hope that helps you in your cake decorating endeavors
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Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday
*upbeat music*