Achieve Whiter Buttercream With This Bold Food Coloring

If you've ever made buttercream frosting, you're likely aware of the slight yellow shade it can take on. This is a natural result of its namesake ingredient: Butter is yellow, so a frosting with a lot of butter in it (a Tasting Table recipe for vanilla buttercream frosting uses an entire cup) is going to turn out yellow. While the vibrant color is great in certain circumstances, sometimes you really want the taste of buttercream without the yellow coloring. Luckily, you can turn buttercream white with just a bit of food coloring.

While it may seem counterintuitive at first, you can make the yellow color of buttercream turn white by adding an even bolder color: purple. This is because yellow and purple are on opposite ends of the color spectrum, and combining them in the right amounts neutralizes both shades, leaving you with a clean white color. The process is very simple: Just add a couple drops of purple liquid gel food coloring to the buttercream, then mix it in thoroughly, whether by hand or with a stand mixer. The result is a perfectly white buttercream ready to ice a cake. Be sure to only use a little bit of food coloring, though, or you risk turning the whole thing gray or even purple. One to two tiny drops should do the trick.

If you do accidentally use too much purple dye, don't fret. You can whip up some more buttercream and mix the two together, letting the natural yellow of the second batch neutralize the overly purple result of the first. You might end up with a lot of extra frosting, but when making decadent cakes, it's better to have too much than not enough. You can also incorporate other tasty ingredients that are naturally white, such as marshmallow fluff, which will also enhance the taste and texture of your buttercream.

White buttercream has a ton of uses that yellow buttercream won't work for. For instance, a white buttercream is the perfect icing for a wedding cake, or any other design where you want a very clean appearance. A cute bridal topper simply wouldn't look right on a yellow cake, after all. White buttercream is also a much better base to use if you want to turn it into any other color. For instance, adding red dye straight into regular buttercream will net you an orange frosting, as the red mixes with the yellow to form a new color. The same goes for blue, which turns green. If you first create white buttercream with purple dye, you can easily dye it a vibrant primary color without worrying about the colors mingling and creating an undesirable result.