Have you seen these Dr Oetker gel food colours on the supermarket shelves yet? They’re available in these really handy squeezy tubes. Nice and neat and easy to use and what’s more they don’t make your icing go all runny. Each 10g tube of gel can be used to colour enough icing to cover 24 cupcakes in a really bright neon colour or a whopping 200 pastel coloured ones.
The range is available in Bright red, Sky Blue, Sunshine Yellow, Lime Green, Hot Pink, Ultra Violet, Neon Orange and Jet Black and is perfect for wet icing. It’s a bit too runny to colour sugarpaste as it makes it super sticky but it’s perfect for colouring royal icing whether for writing or flooding cookies. I wanted to give the tubes a test run and my two little helpers wanted to play too. We mixed up some icing sugar and I let them colour it. Let’s just say that we started with four colours then they created their own mix match colours and both added every colour gel we had into one bowl. The end result wasn’t quite what I expected. Usually when you add black colouring you end up with a dark gloomy colour but both Beau and Darcey created khaki green colours.
We had been out to a farm on the day we did the colouring and it was freezing outside. When we got home they both shot upstairs and came down in their onsies. I can’t seem to get them out of them if they are at home!
The icing was used to first put together this gingerbread house from Christmas (which has made the whole kitchen smell divine). For this they used lots of pretty coloured icing which is mainly on the inside. Then the fun really began. Beau grabbed our Friday night sweets, put them all in separate bowls and started piling them on with the khaki coloured icing. Let’s just say they brushed their teeth REALLY well that night!
And here’s the mess that the girls made with this little gingerbread house. I turned my back for two minutes! I don’t think we had any small bowls left in the cupboard!
Dr Oetker Gel Food colours are available from major supermarkets from £1.29 for a 10g tube. For more information and some lovely recipes check out the website www.oetker.co.uk
Oh what a lovely fun, colourful and happy post. I want to make a Gingerbread house now, even though its nearly Spring time!
Thank you fo giving it to the girls. They’ve thoroughly enjoyed it- making and more importantly eating it!
It looks great! I’m guessing they had a little help with the assembly? 😉 x
Eeerrrrrr! Just a little and I didn’t lick my fingers once!
Hello Emma
Hope you are well, I haven´t left a comment in a while, although I am still closely following your always interesting blog!
This is not related to this post, but will leave it anyway.
I bought “Jerusalem” after reading your review and being able to borrow it from my local library. You were right and the repices are fantastic. However, have come across another Ottolengui one that is proving to be equally good – Plenty. Dedicated only to vegetarian recipes.
If you liked Jerusalem I think you will adore this one too. Have tried two recipes (Leek fritters and Lentils w/ roasted tomatoes and gorgonzola) and have another couple lined up for the next days. Felt it was my duty to share how great this one is – You was the one introducing me to Ottolengui after all!
Link to Plenty on amazon:
Plenty
Thanks Eva, I’m so impressed that you can loan new books from your library. It didn’t occur to me they would be that current! I shall have to check my library out in more detail next time. So far I’ve only borrowed the Julia Childs books and some kids cake decorating ones (which I too bought afterwards) but they were years old. It always amazes me how out of fashion cake decorating books can get.
I shall have to check out Plenty. Ottolenghi was on TV the other night and he looks so lovely. He’s definitely on my ‘would like to meet’ list.
Spk soon
EmmaMT