PRO TIP: The Single-Bowl Method

When coloring icing or frosting, use this method to simplify cleanup and make your colors in your set more cohesive!

Ask any cookier: What is their biggest gripe with cookie decorating? MAKING ALL THE COLORS OF ICING.

How many colors of icing do you see here? Yeah, I didn't mind it at all, because I used the Single-Bowl Method! Read on to relieve yourself of stress!

Steps of the Single-Bowl Method, with examples

  • Step 1: Determine how many colors you need and list them out, along with what consistencies you need of each color.

    For this sample set, I needed white, green, grey, blue, and yellow.

    White: Flood and outline consistency
    Green: Flood and outline consistency
    Grey: Flood consistency
    Yellow: Flood consistency
    Blue: Flood consistency

  • Step 2: Take out one large bowl, separate from your mixing bowl where all of your white icing is. Take out a cup or two (or however much you need) of the white icing and put it in the new mixing bowl.

  • Step 3: From lightest to darkest colors, you will use that one new mixing bowl to mix all of your colors. You will not wash the bowl in between colors; you'll actually intentionally use whatever remnants of the previous color are left in the bowl to add a slight tint of that color your new one!

    In this example, let's say I started with yellow. I bagged the amount of the thicker yellow I needed and then also the amount of flooding consistency yellow icing I needed, having added water to that individual coloring bowl to make it my ideal consistency before bagging. Next I'll move onto blue. I only need a little bit of light blue, so I'll add maybe a cup or so of white icing to the bowl, leaving the yellow remnants in there. There should be so little yellow in there that adding so much white will dilute it greatly. Then I add the blue food coloring, and get that nice sky color after enough mixing. Then, once bagged, I start over with green!