Icing Food Coloring Help Please?

sammyjo0402

Sorry this isn't "healthy" or anything but advice would be soooo appreciated! So my best friend's birthday is tomorrow and I baked her a purple velvet cake.. her favorite color with some homemade cream cheese frosting but I ran out of sugar making the cake and had to use brown sugar for the icing. Obviously, brown sugar made the icing brown. Does anyone have any quick suggestions as to what I can add to make it a prettier color? I really wanted it to be purple but I don't think that'll happen. I only have a short time right now do it and have just your basic primary colors.

maddymama

I'd take a little bit (tablespoon or two) into a separate bowl, mix in a bit of red and blue and see if you can make a pretty purple out of it. How brown is brown on the icing?
Other alternative, go to a crafting store and spend a few bucks on gel colors and see if you can find one that might work for you.
Third alternative, go to the store, buy ingredients, make new icing from scratch.

Pedal_Pusher

Have you ever seen Cake Boss?

california_peach

Do like they used to do for Red Velvet cakes and use beet juice. You'll need a lot to get that purple color, but it should work.

pocketmole

what about accenting the cake with purple instead of trying to tint the icing? purple and brown can look nice together. obviously this is super fancy pants piping work, but this is an off white icing with purple detailing to show you what I mean: http://www.trendybride.net/sites/default/files/gallery_images/purple-cream-wedding-cake.jpg

if you don't have very good piping skills you could maybe embellish with purple ribbon or silk flowers if you have any around.

also brown sugar icing tends to be quite pale, i'd suspect it would take color pretty well. i would do what the other person suggested and try mixing a tiny amount of blue and red into it to see what you can get. in my experience mixing blue and red colors doesn't look nearly as pretty as going out and buying an actual violet dye though.

another option is to run and get a crap ton of purple sprinkles and just cover the sucker up.

sammyjo0402

Lol thanks.. I had already tried doing the red and blue in another bowl and that turned out to be a really nasty color.. The icing was pretty brown. The cake itself I had been able to turn into a deep purple red so I just put the brown on top of it. It's insanely delicious. *had made another cake priorhand as a test trial* so.. I guess that's what'll have to matter. And thanks @pocketmole that would be a good idea! (: