[Cookie Decorating] Color Bleed: The Cookier’s Archnemesis

Fact: The worst part about being a baker is baking. 😂 Kiiiidding, it is color bleed if you're a sugar cookie baker. 😭 Even the most seasoned bakers will face color bleed from time to time but there are some ways you can avoid it or stop it altogether. Not sure what color bleed is? Allow me to tattle on myself - note the orange. And yes, I did say "boo" when I woke up and saw this.

😢 First off, what is color bleed?

Color bleed is when one color is absorbed into another color pulling the first color into the second through the exchange of moisture during the cookie's drying process. Summary - 😟 it's annoying and it can ruin your set by creating sloppy blurred lines. You’ll find this most commonly seen when working with royal icing and the most bled-into color is white. The bleed happens when food coloring bleeds into the adjacent color causing a not-so-fun design that you can’t fix (insert sad face here). Well, you can eat the cookie and that will fix it…. But that’s more of a bandaid than an actual fix. Although, eating a cookie does make color bleed less sad, right!?

🧠 Let’s go over some tips and tricks that have helped me “beat the bleed” and maybe will help you keep your sanity too.

1. Add white food coloring to your icing can help stop color bleed. 🏳️

I don’t know the science here but many bakers will add white food coloring to their icing mix to help defend against color bleed. The idea is that the colors that typically bleed have food coloring in them, so making sure your white food coloring also has food coloring in it may block the need for your whites to suck in other colors. How much white food coloring should you add? No clue- I just eyeball it 🙏 and give it one big squirt and say a little prayer that’s usually enough! If you want a more scientific approach, start with a teaspoon and work up from there!

Example: I use AmeriColors gels (more on color bleed and coloring types later in this blog) - but here's what it looks like (and it's linked - not an affiliate link, so click freely!).

2. Add cream of tartar to your icing to prevent colors from bleeding into each other.

Meringue is an unstable (kind of like that one great aunt who has no filter and seems to always get an invite to family gatherings) ingredient and the leading cause of any issue you might face in your royal icing. From overmixing to color bleed to just an unknown pain in the buns, meringue can keep you humble as a baker. Cream of tartar is known to be a stabilizer in royal icing mixes that can help keep your sanity and keep your icing from bleeding. Don’t ask me the science, just roll with it!

3. Use a thicker royal icing icing consistency to avoid color bleed.

Thicker icing can help stop color bleed in its tracks. Why? Thicker icing means less water content in your icing (which is why it's a thicker consistency) and that means less of a chance that one color can be absorbed into another color. Is thicker icing harder to work with? Absolutely. 😖 That's because less water means it’ll dry faster so you have to work quickly with it. We're just trying to pick the lesser of two evils here.

⏰ If you’re a slower decorator, try making a thicker outline icing and a thinner flood icing to help stop the color bleed. The thicker border butting up to another thicker border will keep the water content low and the chance of color bleed even lower. But in case you thought it'd be that easy - there's more to the theory of consistency and color bleed. (and here we thought cookies would be fun, cute, and not a cortisol spike 🤪)

4. 〰 Make sure your icing consistency is the same throughout.

What I like to do is make a 2 lb batch of icing and pull from that for all my colors in an order. This guarantees that my icing consistency is the same throughout all my colors and gives it less chance of bleeding.

If you have a really thin icing color next to a thicker one, it can sometimes lead to color bleed because of the extra water content in that one thinner consistency color. Ensuring that your consistency is the same with each color can help keep your icing from being too thin and absorbing other colors.

5. Let the icing dry completely - this can help beat the bleed.

If you are butting up a color to another color and they are side by side - let it dry before going into the next flood. 🤔 Why? This will typically stop one color from taking on the neighboring color because it doesn’t have as much water content to pull from the adjacent flood. Read below for a few different tips to get that icing d-r-y. A lot of "stopping color bleed" theory can be explained by getting that royal icing to dry as quickly as possible so that moisture exchange ceases.

6. 🥶 Cool the room down.

When it’s the dead of summer, I will cool the room I’m decorating cookies in so that my icing isn’t sitting in the heat for any time before it completely dries. A cooler room temperature will cause your icing to crust faster - this can help with color bleed. When a room is hot, the icing will stay wet longer and that can lead to the colors pulling from one another. Remember - dry icing doesn't bleed. It's during the drying process that the exchange of moisture happens that leads to the bleeds - so getting our cookies crusted will assist in the icing staying put.

🪟 I like to use thick, black-out curtains to keep the room from warming up and to keep the inside of the room cooler for longer.

7. Use a dehydrator to dry out royal icing quickly (before the color bleed strikes).

Dehydrators are typically associated with drying out meats, but they can also help dry out your icing too. I have a Cabella dehydrator and use it when the humidity in my cookie room is at an all-time high. What a dehydrator will do is pull the moisture out of your icing so you can skip out on color bleed and live your best life. I use this one from Cabela's - but you're likely going to get the same results from most of these (this just fits nicely on my office desk).

Worried that the dehydrator will dry out your cookie dough? Use dehydrator sheets to block the air from your cookie bottoms so it’ll only pull the moisture out of your icing. I ordered reusable ones on Amazon, cut them down to size and they’ve been perfect to help protect my dough from drying out.

8. 🫗 Use a dehumidifier to remove moisture in the air of your cookie room.

Just like a hot room can slow down your royal icing crust, a humid room can do the same. If you live in a humid area, you know the feeling of water hanging out in the air. This water content in the air can add extra moisture to your icing and that can lead to color bleed. Using a dehumidifier can help lower the humidity in the room and let your icing crust over a little faster which can stop color bleeding in its tracks.

Things to note about a dehumidifier - 🚫 don’t leave it unattended. Dehumidifiers typically have a reservoir that can fill up fairly fast depending on where you live and how humid the area is. Make sure to check it and dump it out throughout the time you’re using it so it doesn’t overflow or turn off when you need it most. The last thing we want is wet cookies and wetter carpets.

9. 🌬️ Use a tabletop fan to help dry the cookies quickly.

Tabletop fans are my best friend! They help cookies dry faster, are fairly cheap, and can help stop color bleeding before it starts. Just like other things we’ve mentioned, a fan can help your icing crust faster and dry quicker so you don’t wake up to the dreaded colors bleeding into one another.

• ⚠️ Tip: get a fan that plugs into the wall so you aren’t running through batteries like I run through Diet Coke (side note: I’m a Diet Coke lover and can run through a pack like it’s my job.)

• ⚠️ Second Tip: Make sure the fan is pretty small. Large fans can cause your icing to ripple and we don’t want that… unless we are making an ocean theme… then it would be kind of a cool effect.

10. 🥄 Use a toothpick so you don’t oversaturate your icing - this is a big bleed offender.

Sorry - there was no toothpick emoji, so a spoon emoji you get! Too much food coloring can cause your icing to have no choice but to bleed into the next color. 🎨 Instead of squeezing the food coloring (if you’re using gel colors) into your icing, use the end of a toothpick and dab it into the desired food color and then into your icing base. Mix and see if you need a little more to get your desired color. Remember, you can always add more food coloring to your icing but you can’t ever take some out.

11. Use powdered food colors as an alternative to gel food coloring.

We’ve learned that adding moisture content in royal icing can lead to color bleed and gel food colors do add moisture (however not that much). Switch to powdered food colors like The Sugar Art or Americolor to make sure you aren’t adding any unnecessary moisture to your icing. Powdered food coloring is typically made from a combination of food-grade dyes and a powdered base, such as maltodextrin or cornstarch. The powdered form makes it easy to mix into dry ingredients like icing sugar without adding excess moisture.

Side bonus - powdered food coloring tends to be more stable than liquid or gel-based alternatives. It's less likely to alter the consistency of your royal icing, which is crucial for achieving the right piping and flooding consistency in cookie decorating - and also helps beatin' the bleed.

12. 🌞 Let your cookies dry in the shade - not in sunlight from a window.

Last, but not least, don’t let your cookies dry in direct sunlight. The sun can heat those bad boys and, as we have learned, heat can cause the icing to dry slower and create the chance for color bleed. I like to make sure my curtains are drawn when I leave my cookies to dry. The sun is always moving (gotta love that earth’s axis) so putting them in a shadow at the beginning of the day can have them directly in the sun by the end.

There ya have it. All my tips to help stop color bleed before it starts. Can color bleed always be avoided? No. Sometimes the icing gods have it out for ya and you can do everything right and it can still happen. But using a few of these tips together can save your sanity and your icing!

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