Chocolate Brown Icing
The Thanksgiving holiday is approaching full steam. For most people this means turkey and pumpkin pie…but for a cookie decorator it means tons of brown icing.
Brown has long been a source of frustration for new {and sometimes experienced} decorators, but with a little practice you CAN master it.
Let’s start with the basics. My two favorite browns are Americolor warm brown and Americolor chocolate brown. Using these two colors as a base, I can make almost any shade I have in mind. Check out the icing swatches below.
- Americolor warm brown, straight from the bottle
- Americolor chocolate brown, straight from the bottle
- Americolor warm brown with a touch of Americolor super black
- Americolor chocolate and warm brown, mixed
- Americolor chocolate brown mixed with Americolor super black
Two of the most important things to remember when making brown icing is:
- It takes quite a bit of color to get a rich brown
- A little black can deepen brown icing significantly
Here’s a visual of how white royal icing becomes a deep shade of chocolate brown.
Keep in mind, however, that brown is notorious for developing after it dries, sometimes significantly.
What does this mean? Basically, it gets darker as it sits, so you might go to bed to perfectly chestnut football cookies and wake up to a big coffee-colored mess.
The two shades of brown below are actually the same shade of icing one day apart. After 24 hours the black undertone was much more noticeable than the day before.
If this is a problem for you, my advice is to mix brown icing a day or two BEFORE you need it, so you will have a chance to lighten it in the case that it develops more than you like.
Try combining the brown shades mentioned above with other colors such as egg yellow, ivory, gold, regal purple, avocado green, and more. The results might surprise you.
Here are a few of the MANY projects I’ve made using custom shades of brown.
Simple Autumn Leaves and Acorns
And if you need tons of brown, you may just want to go with chocolate royal icing. You can find the recipe HERE.
So, I have to ask…have you mastered brown? If you have, do you have a favorite color combination, or are you “straight out of the bottle”? I’d love to hear!
I hope everyone is as excited about the upcoming holiday {mainly the eating} as I am. I cannot wait to see all the Thanksgiving cookies to come.
Happy Baking!
I will definitely be making my browns a couple days in advance now–thank you for such an awesome tip!!
Brown is always tricky for me! I also add a little black sometimes, and have also mixed browns with Wilton’s copper too!
I have NOT mastered the brown icing as evidenced by my recent set of owl cookies. I will say that your icing chart helped me get much closer than I would’ve been however. The black was definitely key to getting me in the “chocolate ballpark”.
Great post! thank you so much… Brown always is a problem… i love how you compared all the shades and gave the recipe for each. thanks!
P.S. I’m on a roll, using my cutters for different purposes thanks you your talk at Cookie Con. In addition to the Winnie the Pooh cookies from the cauldon shape , I made a treasure map out of a drum cutter, a treasure chest out of a tombstone cutter and a wedding cake out of a Christmas tree shape.. I will never look at my cutters for one purpose again. Kris
#2 looks divine
I never plan far enough in advance to make my frosting ahead. I just ballpark it. I mean really, who’s going to complain? Don’t like it, don’t eat my cookies!
I love it when you do colors posts! Brown is one of my favorite colors but, it doesn’t always like me as much as I like it!
JUST IN TIME! Making cookies tomorrow and I need very specific brown colors. Now I don’t even have to think about it because you did all the work for me. MUAH!
I LOVE your posts on color! Do more if you like 🙂
Awesome but where was this post two days ago when I was mixing up my fall browns??? Now get to work on Christmas greens, would you?!? 🙂
Where oh where was this post when I made my pumpkin cookies a few weeks ago? I managed to mix what I thought was a lovely shade of orange – a dark, burnt shade that matched the walls in my kitchen. It actually developed pretty quickly though and looked rusty brown by the time it dried on my cookies. Thanks for the tips, Callye, you are a veritable fount of cookie decorating wisdom!
You’re so lovely.
I still wish I had patience to make cookies as beautiful as yours. I love the Thanksgiving platter. Love all the colors and yes, brown is very tricky. Just like red.
My favorite is number 2 and 4, not only I want those on my cookies, but I want my hair in those colors too. 🙂
What a great post Callye.
Ps. Are you getting my emails?
Love the visual, Callye! My biggest problem with brown is it having a green hue to it when I used lemon juice for flavoring. I haven’t had that problem since I switched to extract. You should sell WWCD (What Would Callye Do?) bracelets. I know I am constantly asking myself that question when I approach a batch of cookies. You have done so much for the cookie world. Thank you!
I use Americolor Chocolate Brown – I’ve found Wilton’s brown is rubbish, it’s never a nice rich colour. Sometimes I will add some golden yellow or some red, depending on what shade I’m going for. I love the little turkey cookie on your Thanksgiving platter – it’s so cute! You could totally adapt it for a peacock design, too!
I am super lazy so if it comes out of the bottle and it’s sort of brown, that is how it stays ;p
Beautiful pictures. What are the speckled cookies in the last photograph? They look absolutely amazing.
Ahh, never mind. I just saw there was a link.
I love making brown! But I mostly use Americolor Chocolate Brown straight out of the bottle. I’m not a really good color-mixer.
This is a great post, Callye. I’ve had a nice brown color turn almost black overnight, so brown is always made a day ahead. I’ve been using Chefmaster “Buckeye Brown”, because I wasn’t loving the Americolor Chocolate Brown. I must not have been adding enough, so I’ll have to squeeze more in next time!!
Thank you for this post! Every time I use the warm brown I want to shoot myself for even trying because it’s always so red! But laying it out and showing what the colors look like mixed…well now this gives me hope! Thank you!
I love your helpful color tips! One question, though, with your Thanksgiving platter at the top of the post… That blue color is so striking amongst all those fall colors. Is that the same blue color you mentioned was your favorite blue color (I think you did a post about it around Independence Day)?
Hey there, Mike! I’m glad you noticed that one, its one of my faves! It’s Americolor teal mixed with a little ivory and a drop of forest green. I’ll talk about it again tomorrow!!!
Awesome. Thanks, Callye!! I look forward to tomorrow’s post!
I’m constantly blown away by how amazing your cookies are. I love those autumn leaves and owls.
Wow another post spot on. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
You are amazing!!!! Come by to our Blog Party, In The Kitchen Thursdays! Please share the blog party with others, thank you!
http://artbyasm.blogspot.com/2012/11/in-kitchen-thursdays.html
Warmest Regards,
Annamaria
I like the Americolor chocolate brown with a touch of Americolor black. That’s my go to brown color. I love all the brown combos you’ve come up with.
Thanks for those tips. I never loved the wilton browns. My favorite brown is Sugarflair Dark Brown, which I get from the UK (off ebay) along with their Dusky Pink. For my tastes they have the other companies beat hands down on these 2 colors. Although I must admit I do have the americolor as well. It is good to have a variety. Sometimes I look at all the colors, glitters, shimmers and dusts I have and think whoa that must have cost a bundle…..imagine if I bought it in one hit instead of little bits here and there over time 🙂
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Positively love your website! The inspiration and tips are wonderful! Thank you.
You are so talented. I bake gingerbread houses every Christmas. I like to use brown icing to blend in with the color of the cookie and have always had difficulty getting the right shade. (In fact, this year, I made a brown house by adding brown color to the cookie dough.) I will try Americolor and will experiment with your suggestions. I have been using wilton brown and black, but have had only so-so results. It definitely takes a LOT of color to make brown icing.
Before I started visiting this site, I would have never thought of using white color to brighten up my icing. What a difference; I told my mom and she uses it now too! Thank you- you are an inspiration!
Can I have the recipe for the sugar icing please?
You are such an inspiration to me!
I love your tutorials with the colors.
Thanks
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I always start my brown and black icing by adding a teaspoon (or so) of excellent quality cocoa powder to my already mixed royal icing and then adding my colours. I’ve never had drying issues like this – maybe the water difference is key??
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