The Secret To Making Inky, Jet Black Frosting

Before you go ham on the food coloring, you need to start with the magic ingredient in your frosting recipe: cocoa powder. It’s the perfect tinted base to layer black gel coloring (way more saturated than liquid) to achieve an inky, truly black hue.

Even if chocolate buttercream with black cocoa powder seems dark enough, Nelson says you can take it even further by adding in black icing color, which Wilton makes.

Her go-to brand? “[Artisan Accents] is a great brand if you want to avoid that bitter taste that you get when you make dark colors, says Kymberly, who has experience using all different brands of food gel coloring.