Color Mill food coloring is ideal for buttercream, Swiss meringue, chocolate, and cake batter. Being oil-based, it will easily cover up fats found in baking, unlike gel colors; furthermore, it dries brighter and doesn’t turn grainy like titanium dioxide does – plus booster packs are available to boost less effective Color Mill colors.
Liquid Colouring
Liquid food coloring is essential for Easter egg coloring or customizing Grandma’s Red Velvet cake – from dyeing Easter eggs with vibrant hues to adding the finishing touches to Grandma’s award-winning Red Velvet cake, liquid food color is at the core. This easy-to-use food dyeing solution comes in small plastic squeeze bottles in drop-by-drop increments until you reach your desired shade.
Liquid food coloring is usually produced using synthetic dyes in a water base, although some individuals may prefer natural ones. Synthetic dyes are cheaper and more readily available than their powdered counterparts; additionally, they’re easier to work with than the more powdery and granular powdered colors.
Synthetic food dyes are usually ionic solids, meaning their molecules contain positive and negative ends that are held together with ionic bonds. When food colorants are dissolved in water, their ions dissolve into solution and attach themselves to polar water molecules, causing food-coloring molecules to move towards the edge of the bowl where they mix and swirl around together.
Some may express concerns over the health effects of artificial food dyes (studies have linked them with ADHD in children, obesity, or carcinogens), but most claims relating to artificial dyes don’t involve human subjects; many high-quality synthetic food coloring options perform very well; there are also non-toxic plant dyes from brands like Sugarflair Rainbow Dust Squires for more natural options.
Gel Colouring
Colour Mill has enhanced traditional gel food dyes by swapping their water content for cake-friendly oils, enabling more effective color blending and less uneven or speckled results – producing vibrant, rich, and accurate hues!
Food coloring sets are convenient and user-friendly with their easy flip-top cap, enabling users to control how many drops of color are used at any time. Perfect for coloring batter, icing, fondant, and more, made in the USA.
Gel dye is another synthetic food coloring product made of synthetic molecules mixed with either glycerine or corn syrup as its base. It creates a thicker consistency than regular liquid food colorings and is ideal for coloring icing, frosting, and marzipan. A range of shades is available, so it should meet all your coloring needs!
Gel dyes offer another advantage by not altering the liquid ratios of your recipe, which can be essential when creating recipes requiring precise liquid measurements (such as meringues or royal icing ).
One drawback of gel dyes is their tendency to crystallize or clog over time. This can make managing them in busy kitchen environments challenging, while additional moisture may damage certain mixtures that need extra water for their composition. We therefore advise keeping gel colors stored in excellent, dark locations.
Oil-Based Colouring
Our oil-based food coloring is ideal to add a vibrant hue to buttercream, icing, or fondant. Unlike liquid and gel food colorings, which require mixing with water to reach their desired shade, oil-based colors use glycerol as their base instead. Their high concentration means only tiny amounts are necessary for a vibrant hue that won’t fade over time.
Colorants are explicitly designed to bind with oils and fats found in food, making them perfect for coloring Swiss meringue, buttercream, ganache, and chocolate cakes. You’ll have 12 colors to mix and match for the perfect shade!
Colorings from this range are certified halal and contain no genetically modified (GM) ingredients; however, due to ongoing controversy regarding whether carmine (E120) can be considered halal, we advise customers to consult their religious adviser before purchasing this product.
Food colorants must be added carefully to create the desired result, as too much can devastate texture and taste. We advise using only the recommended amount per batch and storing extras in an airtight container in an excellent dry location.
Booster
Color is perhaps the most influential product-intrinsic sensory cue when setting expectations about food and beverages’ taste and flavor intensity. Lab research has clearly illustrated this fact; changing hue, intensity/saturation levels of food colors have dramatically impacted consumers’ sensory expectations (see [40,63] for review).
Food color’s significance as an intrinsically encoded cue has also contributed to national and international regulations on what chemicals may or may not be allowed for food and beverage production, often driven by health and safety considerations or to reduce exposure to potentially toxic materials (e.g., copper arsenite which killed two people when used to color cheese and tea leaves in 1860; a red lead that was still permitted until 1862).
Consumers with an increasing preference for “cleaner” food have responded by seeking foods free from artificial colorings; however, these often taste bland and uninspiring. As such, manufacturers must develop and implement consistent color-flavor mappings for their products – including surprising diners with food that seems one way but delivers unexpected flavors likely to be received positively by restaurants.
