Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A
I buy Renshaw’s purple – www.cakecraftshop.co.uk do a mail order service. Also if you only need a few packs it’s better than buying a case and wasting it. I have a Ma Cuisine shop near me and they also stock it, but it is a tad more expensive, however, if you only need one or two packs, then by the time you add postage onto the price, it may work out cheaper to buy locally.
Hi Arwen
Sometimes purple can be difficult to get just right especially if you’re starting with a white base. You’d need to add quite a lot of colour and it could end up changing the consistency of the sugar paste and possibly the flavour. I think if it’s a deep purple you’d save yourself a lot of bother by just buying, that’s what I do now. The only time I make large amounts of deep colours is if I’m making the sugar paste from scratch, in which case the colour gets added in at the beginning before mixing in the sugar. If you’d like to try your hand at making the fondant yourself I’ve posted 3 recipes here http://www.cakeflix.com/questions?s=how+to+make+sugar+paste+from+scratch. Hope this is useful to you.
