Our Easy Guide to Liquid Gel Food Coloring – Plus Blending Tips!

Achieve bold and vibrant colors in all your culinary or confectionery creations with the help of liquid gel food coloring! Gel food coloring is the preferred choice by professional bakers and candy makers, as well as the home user, since they are highly-pigmented colorings. Gels can help achieve the desired coloring results in less drops than liquid food coloring, making gel colors very cost-effective for those who do a lot of baking or candy making. Gel colors are also very popular with users due to its versatility in coloring a variety of baking and candy-making applications, including frostings, icings, batter, lollipops, gummies and more!

Like most gel food colorings/paste, LorAnn’s Liquid Gel Food Colors are water-based and contain glycerin, where the semi-thick coloring creates a more concentrated form of food coloring. LorAnn’s Liquid Gel Food Colors are packaged in a convenient squeeze bottle dispenser for 1 oz. and 4 oz. sizes. This helps easily squeeze, gel food color drops into your creation since they are thicker in consistency.

Shop Liquid Gel Food Colors here!

Every colorful creation needs the best flavor! Shop our flavors to add delicious flavor to your favorite recipes.

Our Liquid Gel Blending Tips

1. Gel colors are very saturated so start with 1-2 drops at a time to achieve your desired color. This will help avoid ending up with a darker shade than desired. With most of our liquid gels, desired color can be achieved in 3-4 drops.
2. Due to their strong and vibrant colors it is best to use in applications where a darker color is desired.
3. You can use gel colors in both large and small batches of batter or icing. Colors are hard to duplicate, so keep size in mind and mix as much frosting, batter or icing, etc. as you need for your project.
4. Colors will deepen when set aside for a few hours or even overnight.
5. Cookiers love that are gel colors work very well in royal icing! Get our best royal icing tips here.
6. Achieving the perfect red hue can be difficult in both gel and liquid food colors for any baker or candy maker, especially when starting with a white frosting base. For a vibrant red shade that will not come out as pink, we recommend at least 9 drops of red gel coloring. For deeper hues, use 14-24 drops. This range will not affect the flavor of your creation whether it is frosting, batter, icing, glaze, etc.
7. Another tricky color to achieve is black, particularly when starting with a white frosting base. For the darkest black shade without changing the flavor of your creation, we recommend 16-20 drops of our black gel food coloring. Gray coloring can also be achieved using our black gel food coloring. We recommend 3-4 drops in a white base for a gray hue that is subtle and soothing.
8. Adding purple or brown gel food colors to any other coloring can help create a darker, more muted hue.
9. Place colored frostings or icings in piping bags with tips to create a variety of fun shapes, colors, and designs.

Do we have you intrigued with all of the colors you can create? The options are endless! Check out our blending tips chart below for a quick and easy guide in creating fun colors for your candies, frostings, icings, cream cheese, and more.

View Our Blending Chart Guide!