At the weekend I made some Cookie Monster and Elmo cupcakes.
To make the red fur on the Elmo ones, I had to use quite a lot of red liquid food colouring.
The thing is, the red buttercream had a strange taste, almost like a cream cheese.
Is this normal ? I've only used a small amount of food colourings in the past, and I've not noticed any taste before.
The food colouring I used is from the Asda.
The taste was not unpleasant, just unexpected.

Its not so much a flavour if the colouring more so you will have used so much to get a vibrant red that it will have started to split/breakdown the fats in the frosting.

I did a similar thing trying red velvet whoopies

Try the colouring gels/pastes. You get a much more vibrant colour with only a small amount of colouring. I dont use anything else now

i second the last post about colour gels....you can get a major choice of colours of ebay. I use either wilton ones or sugarflair. Red and black take more to get a true colour but the sugarflair do a red extra and black extra which uses less

Can you use these gel colours like paint and paint colours onto the surface of a cake ?
If it comes to that, can you use liquid colours as paint ?
I've never painted onto cakes, but I fancy giving it a go !

I've painted a cake

I wanted to make my mum a poinsettia topped cake one year for xmas. I coloured the icing with a little red to get a pink, rolled it out then placed a print out on top, used a needle to mark the shape and then cut before painting and leaving to dry. I gave it 2 coats and was really chuffed with the result - really vibrant. It worked great for the veins etc as you can trace them on lightly and get a darker line.

Have always fancied trying to load a thin icing/food colouring mix into a washed out oil spray bottle - think that might have good results too.

Food colouring shouldn't taste well except Squid ink obviously, try using powdered colours
also that the effect of vibrant colours on the senses such as eyesight may well effect the perception of taste.

i do believe you can add a small amount of the gel/paste to a couple of splashes of vodka and mix, it becomes a paint to decorate cakes with...the alcohol in the paint evaporates of or somthing like that lol

It definitely does have a taste but it doesn't become apparent unless you add lots. One time when I made coloured cupcakes I ended up adding loads to make blue ones, and I could taste a kind of 'metallic' taste in the cooked cake. This is with the liquid food colour.

More recently I bought some Americolor concentrated food paste, where, like the Wilton ones other posters have mentioned, needs only the tiniest amount (apply with a cocktail stick) and it was great. I have the 'electric' colours at the moment, and I am looking to purchase a whole load of other colours.

the colours from the Wilton gels are awesome
http://imgur.com/r66dU

The normal bottled ones taste vile, you can only use a small amount. They smell and taste like hand gel, with white spirit and sugar mixed in.

This is the food colouring I used. The webpage shows the black, but I used red. I don't know how much I used - I just kept adding more until I got the shade I wanted !
http://groceries.asda.com/asda-estor...questid=129118

Cochineal tastes vile