Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I’m at my wits end over trying to colour fondant to a deep (but bright) sapphire blue. I just can’t seem to get a good blue. Having looked at other people’s tips, it seems I should use Royal Blue with a smidge of black. However, the Royal Blue does not come out deep enough and by adding more colour, it just turns the blue to a deep teal shade of blue! I need this for a Sapphire wedding anniversary cake and I’m getting very disheartened by it. Furthermore, by using so much colour to mix the deep shade, I have to knead it quite a lot but now I note that there are problems with over-kneading which I never knew! Can anyone give me some pointers here?

PS I have the following line in my T&Cs “All cakes are handmade and whilst we will endeavour to match any designs or colours some differences may occur.”

Have you tried blue with a little bit of purple?

I did but it just went darker rather than bluer. I can’t believe that there isn’t a colour out there that can give the vibrant deep blue of school PE pants! I have the ribbon but no way of achieving that colour 🙁 The pre-made colours are navy (too dark and too grey), baby blue (which I can’t colour up) and atlantic blue (which has a green tinge and doesn’t stay blue). You would think there would be a demand for it…

Is Squires Kitchen Cosmic Blue any good?

Hi Twizzle13

I’ve just coloured a scrap piece of sugar paste Royal blue and added a little ( tip of veining tool) the colour Rosa by Wilton. I have what looks like sapphire although the colour hasn’t developed yet so don’t know what it’ll be like in the morning. Wanna have a go?? x

Didn’t answer all your question! If you manage to achieve the colour write down how many parts of each you used, for example 2 parts blue and say 1 part pink. then if you look here http://www.cakeflix.com/questions/colouring-large-quantities-of-sugarpaste there is help on how to avoid constant kneading. x

Thanks guys. Typically, as with all cakes I do, I realise I have left things right to the last minute to do and clearly, I did not do enough research on the colours (I didn’t realise it would be so hard to match). However, I will rush out and see if I can get a Wilton Rosa as I don’t think Squires paste easy to get locally, and see if that works – I’ll let you know!

I’m just the same! When the cake is finished the customer is very unlikely to notice if the colour is not identical though. I don’t know what the design is but maybe you could use a couple of slightly different shades of blue and then it won’t matter that none of them match the ribbon exactly!