I bought Betty Crocker gel food coloring at the supermarket. I see that Walmart sells a 4 pack by Wilton. Wilton is probably considered a better brand. White cake will be better for coloring.

My neighbor is a hobby baker who makes and decorates beautiful cakes and cookies. She uses white/colorless everything, including colorless vanilla extract. For the ”fat” in her icings, she uses Crisco with colorless butter flavoring. (Sounds gross, tastes delicious but wouldn’t want a steady diet of it.)

One thing she has taught me is add the gel coloring gradually, using a toothpick to add a tiny bit at a time.

My food-coloring experience has been limited to making homemade play dough, not because I wanted to. Twice when it was DD’s turn to send homemade play dough to school, DGD1 was in the hospital, so I made it. Apparently some little kids have a tendency to eat play dough so the school uses homemade made with edible ingredients. It was a total PITA, especially when I had to make a batch of black.

Use a white cake. Yellow is a color and color is additive, so you would need to subtract it from the desired color -- keeping i mind that yellow cake is really golden in color -- so some red too. Oh bother -- just use white.

Gel color is more concentrated and it won't change the moisture level of the batter. If you are going for a wow color, you will probably need gel.

If you use red or black, go for the no flavor versions or it could be bitter.

Bbstx, I've sone a lot with food coloring, but I still find it to be a bit of a pain. For homemade playdough, we got a recipe from our son's preschool teacher that used unsweetened drink mix packets for both color and scenting the dough. Would be totally edible too for those kiddos who have to try it. LOL No black drink mix thought and I never made black. I think I'd do grape (maybe x2) and then add black

Re white vs yellow cake

I bake from scratch and use whole eggs in my cake recipe. I call it a white cake but is that considered yellow because of the egg yolk? Do I need an egg white only cake recipe?

"White cake" is made with egg whites only. but you know how golden the batter is with the number of egg yolks you use, the color you are shooting for and how pure you want the color to be. IF you want to try a different recipe, I always hear raves about Stella Parks' White Mountain Cake. I haven't made it but want to try it.

Lascatx, I don’t remember exactly what I did with the black play dough. I believe I first used all the purple gel and then added all the black. It was a helluva mess, I can tell you that. I cannot stand the smell of fake grape stuff. Thank goodness I didn’t have to flavor it too.

The first batch DD had to make was brown. IIRC I found some formula online for combining the various colors to make brown. Do you know what brown play dough looks like? How did she luck out with all the weird/hard-to-make colors???

Thanks goodness the kids have moved on from that stage. The youngest is now Sr. Kindergarten and I suppose they are old enough to know not to eat the play dough.

@hhireno, how did your project come out? You asked for a brand recommendation. I know I bought mine at Walmart. I don’t remember the brand, but I’m pretty sure it was Wilton or Betty Crocker or maybe both. I was grabbing up packages of whatever they had. With all that was going on with DGD1, DD totally forgot about having to send the play dough to school for DGD2, so it was a last-minute, panic buying trip.

What color is the cake going to be? A yellow might be okay with anything but blue or pink.

Here's a tip from a baking blog.

When to add the color:

As you add in more and more coloring, you need to mix it in to the batter. With a cake mix (vs homemade cake), you can get away with a lot of stirring, but eventually all cake batter will toughen up with lots of mixing and you will end up with tunneling in your cake instead of a nice even, tender crumb. I prefer to add my food coloring as I am combining the liquid and dry ingredients of a recipe, before the batter is completely combined. This way, I still have time to add more as I go without overmixing my batter. That said, if you feel you batter has been mixed very vigorously, you can let it rest for a few minutes before putting it into the oven and that will help the gluten to relax slightly before baking.

Do I need an egg white only cake recipe?

IMHO, yes. I’ve never made the Stella Parks cake that lascatx mentions, but I’ve found her recipes to be reliable and easy to follow.

Agreeing with Eileen that it can depend on what color you're going for. Green, orange, red would work, but pale pink might become more of a salmon, and blue might turn out aqua. Purple/lavender would definitely be affected, wouldn't it?

We haven't been told what color you are wanting to achieve. Most colors would mask an egg yolk. My mother always used her dyes from a cake decorating store. They were paste.

I appreciate all your suggestions, thanks.

Mid project update:

The gel dye I read about as one of the best (Ameri- something, I already forget 😆) was only available at a store 45 minutes from me. I want to make the birthday person happy but not for that much driving.

Went to a Walmart with groceries, the only dyes were limited boxes not in the colors I needed.

Went to Michael’s Crafts, they had a brand that specified Gluten Free. Oh, I hadn’t considered I should think about that for dyes, and I need GF (the cake is GF). Decided to buy that.

Went to Wegman’s (for other things) and checked out their cake decor. They carried Wilton, but not marked as GF. A quick google reveals they do not test or verify their products because of possible cross contamination issues. I was glad I bought the stuff at Michael’s.

Everything I read warned to go easy on how many drops because it can be more intense after baking. I won’t know for sure until we cut it, but I think it will be ok. I might have liked more intensity. 🤷🏼‍♀️

The thought of dyed cake is a bit of an appetite suppressant to me. 😆 IDK if I’ll even have a piece. Maybe dyed frosting wouldn’t be so off-putting?

I made my usual cake recipe, but with GF flour. I was not willing to try a true white cake recipe (only egg whites, clear vanilla which is imitation vanilla). I don’t like very eggy kind of cakes, like angel food.

The cake looks great frosted, but I won’t know until later today if it was worth the effort. 🤞🏼

Now that I own the food dye, I’m tempted to make cupcakes and add increasing drops of each one to see how that changes the appearance.

For some reason, your being put off by dyed cake brought to mind a memory from the distant past. When I was in high school, we had a tea for every occasion. There was a bakery in the big city that sold very thinly sliced sandwich bread in pink, green, and yellow. At every tea, there was a selection of sandwiches on colored bread. We thought it was so fancy!

What color cake did you make, @hhireno? I would have been turning that cake upside down and cutting out a little divot to see what it looked like. Your forebearance far exceeds mine!

btw, Cooks Illustrated did a vanilla taste-test some years ago. They concluded that there was no taste difference between real vanilla extract and imitation vanilla extract in baked goods. The only time it made a difference was when the vanilla was added after the cooking was completed, such as the last step in making a pudding.

I have always disliked red velvet cake because of the taste of the dye.

Now I'm really curious what the cake color is?

Jojo, I’m with you! I’ve never seen the point of Red Velvet Cake. But I do like the cream cheese icing a lot!

Bbs, you're right! The icing is the only good part!

Update:

I’m not necessarily opposed to imitation vanilla, I just don’t want to buy another bottle of vanilla. Good to know for the future that it tests well.

The cake was pink as requested. It was a light pink, visibly pink, but I would have liked more intensity. If there’s ever a next time, I will use many more drops of coloring. Someone said it seemed like it should taste like strawberries because of the color. Maybe that’s some of my prejudice against coloring the batter, it changes my perception of what taste to expect?

Everyone was pleased with the cake so it was all worthwhile.

I can see that. If you put a pink cake in front of me, I’d expect it to taste like strawberries. My strawberry cake recipe (old southern recipe) uses strawberry jello in the batter. It is very pink. I make it maybe once every 2-3 years.

When DH was a kid adn learning to bake, he would dye cupcakes or cake blue so other people wouldn't eat it, We do have strong association between color and flavor - pink could be strawberry or a number of fruits, but also cotton candy and sweet generally. Pink can be tricky. Pale red is often not the pink you want and you don't want it to go peach or lavender. Children often want a more of a hot pink so you are better starting with magenta than a red.