Navy Blue Royal Icing
Navy blue royal icing sounds simple enough but that isn’t always the case. Americolor makes a navy blue gel color but it isn’t quite as “navy” as I would like it to be. My secret? Black.
To create the perfect shade of navy blue icing I like to mix navy or royal blue Americolor with black. Most of the time I use icing rather than gel paste because there’s less risk of adding too much.
Since we’re talking blue, here’s a little visual on the wide range of colors you can achieve by mixing.
- navy blue mixed with black royal icing
- royal blue mixed with sky blue {I love this color so much I wrote about it HERE}
- sky blue with a touch of royal blue and black
Keep in mind that blue icing tends to develop or get darker over time so make it a a little lighter than you think you’ll need. Be sure to print out a copy of my custom color chart to make color mixing a breeze.
Stay cool, cookie friends!
What a timely and excellent post! Navy blue is HARD to achieve, without a little help from our friend, Black!
I LOVE your color chart. I printed it out and use it religiously. Thanks so much!
Brilliant tip on adding black icing rather than black gel when trying to darken a batch of icing! I’ve definitely fallen victim to adding too much black gel paste while tinting my icing. Thanks for another great tip!
You ALWAYS come up with the BEST colors and the BEST way to mix them. Simply Brilliant!
I had someone asking me for advice in making navy icing just the other day. Mixing it with black is brilliant!
P. S. I love your color chart, Callye! I use it as a color reference almost every time I mix icing.
Looks fantastic!
I love the way you mix things up in the kitchen. Your colors are always great and feel special that we get a peek inside your cookie studio to see how the magic happens:)
Thanks for the great tips!
Great post, Callye! Thanks! I just made some homespun plaid cookies for the Fourth with burgundy and navy, and got the perfect navy for the airbrush by using 2 drops royal blue to 1 drop black. (For the burgundy I used 2 drops holiday red + 2 drops deep pink + 1drop black. )
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Callye! Just yesterday I was trying to make navy. Decided to channel my inner sugarbelle and added a bit of black. Then some royal blue, and finally called it good. I guess maybe I subconsciously remembered this post from last year?? Dunno, but today’s update was so very timely. Thanks again!
I’ve got another combo for ya…I should post it in a day or three, lol!
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Hi. What sort of icing is it that you’ve made here? It looks sort of solid-ish in the ‘mixing’ photos but then more liquid in the ‘colour development’ ones. And then it looks crunchy-solid on the actual cookies. 🙂
Sorry, ignore me. I got confused. This comment was actually for the other post about the blue mixing. I thought something went wrong and the comment hadn’t posted, but it looks like my browser went back further than I thought and brought me here, where I’ve now posted a comment that doesn’t fit the entry. Sorry! 🙂
Curious… have you tried adding a dark chocolate cocoa powder to your royal icing instead? I do this with any color I need to have super dark. Even with Black icing I find that I use WAY less food color if I add a bit of cocoa powder to my royal icing. Of course, you have to just use a small bit, otherwise the water and the cocoa powder can cause the icing to seize up a bit… but I’ve found it a much better solution resulting in less food coloring going into the final product with deep rich colors resulting. You also get a bit of that chocolaty flavor in the icing as well..which I’ve found my customers just love. 🙂