Brown Food Colouring for icing???

[mum3girls]

I'm doing a trial run of my daughter's birthday cake and the recipe calls for brown colouring for the butter icing. It also has 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder and says to just tint the icing with the colouring.

I went for a look at our local Woolies and I've picked up Parisian Browning Essence (says it's for browning gravies, soups, broths, beef tea, cakes and puddings) and Imitation Chocolate. Would either of these work, or should I look somewhere else?

TIA

[Heaven]

The cocoa should make it brown anyway??

[[M]umma[M]ia]

yep sara that what i think too!

[mum3girls]

Yeah that's what I was thinking, but wasn't confident enough since the recipe asks for brown colouring as well as the cocoa. Think I might just make up 3 batches of the icing tonight, one with just cocoa and the others with the different essences and see which one looks best and tastes good as well

[Heaven]

Yeah, I reckon the cocoa one would be fine, or just add more cocoa, that's would i would do coz I love chocolate icing, lol.

[[M]umma[M]ia]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm chocolate

[~Raven~]

Real chocolate melted in icing is awesome

[AnyDream]

If you want the milder flavour with the extra colour, just use the parisian browning stuff. A couple of drops should do it!

[mum3girls]

Hmmmm, I'm not a chocolate lover (ducking for cover ) but DD certainly is, thanks for that idea Raven, might give that a go as well - I'm sure hubby's not going to mind taste testing that one

[Liz]

I make a butter icing with coffee & cocoa in it, and it's not THAT brown. Depends on how brown you want it. I'd be inclined to melt real chocolate in it too.. make it real chocolatey.. coz cocoa isn't that nice on it's own imo

[New Dawn]

I always use choc melted in icing like Raven said but all three primary colours mix together make brown... but coco would also do it....

[Trillian]

You can buy real brown colouring. Wiltons do one - if you google them you will find a stockist near you or you can get it online. Most of what you've suggested wont give you a true brown colour. It all depends though on how brown you need it to be for it to look effective kwim?

[mum3girls]

Thanks ladies. I ended up using melted chocolate in the icing and it turned out really well. Wasn't very dark (only used milk choc), but looked good, and tasted good too