How To Make The Color Gray

Have you ever had to make gray fondant or buttercream? If you have, then you know how frustrating it can be! I ran into that problem when I was making my latest cake, which just happened to require a lot of gray fondant! To make my fondant gray, I thought just mixing white fondant with black gel color would do the trick... but what I ended up with was a strange lavender/purple color. How in the world did I end up with purple fondant from Wilton black gel food coloring? After all, isn't gray just a lightened black? Apparently it's not that simple. Well, after some brainstorming and digging way back in my mental files from my high school Painting and Drawing class way back in the 1990's (thank you Mrs. Mays!!), I figured out why that happened and how to remedy the problem!

First of all, it is important to understand how the color black is made. It is a combination of the three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow). Since my gray fondant was a bit on the purple side, we can deduce that there was a bit too much blue and red since blue and red combined make purple. So to make my fondant a true gray, a little yellow is needed. So I added just a dab of Wilton Gel Color in Golden yellow to my purplish fondant and kneaded the fondant until the color was well blended. And that did the trick!

And if you're experiencing the opposite problem - gray fondant looking a little too brown - try adding a little red and blue to achieve a perfect shade of gray!

And that's how you repair your purplish gray fondant or frosting to make it a true shade of gray! I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial! God bless!