red icing- how?

anyone can help me on how to make red icing?

red food colouring? Just use a basic icing mix and add a few drops of red food colouring to it until you get the shade you're after. i don't know if there is any other way?

ETA: thank god other people have much better advice than I do obviously I wasn't meant to be a cake decorator

you can buy food colouring paste from cake decorating places, depending on the shade of red you want. I've found that using food dye sometimes makes the icing go grainy.

If it's butter cream icing it always turns out pink & the more food colouring you add the runnier it gets. We went to a party that had a spider man cake and it stained all the kids hands & faces and was soooo runny.

the idea above is a good one, or I heard somwhere (look it up becuase I could be way off with this info) but the tip was to use copha instead of butter as it's white not yellow like butter. Good for white icing, red or dark blue but has to be left out to go nice and soft.

To make red icing you need to make it a base colour first, otherwise the red colouring and white icing will just make pink. So... make the icing orange first. Then mix the red in. Same goes for when making black.. you need to make it either green or blue first or it will just turn grey.

Pastes are definately alot better to use than the liquids if you can get to a cake decorating shop.

Best of luck!

Definitely a paste or gel colourant, they are much more vivid than liquid colouring Some kitchenware/cake decorating stores also stock not just the colouring agents, but you can also buy quantities of ready-made (and coloured) icing or fondant, so you could always give that a go if you get stuck Good luck, red icing is tricky!!

mmm Wilton gels are awesome, they have a non taste red gel colourant. The trick is to make the icing the day ornight before, as the colour only deepens over time. I have made the icing a light orange first and then used the red colour in.

you can actually just use red liquid colour to make butter cream - just make sure its a dedicated "RED" colouring and not that rubbish that comes in 4 packs (I bought some "pillar box red" from the supermarket that was red enough for ladybird cupcakes....)