How to Color Gum Paste

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to be coloring our gum paste. And, under this cup, as we said, we are only going to take out the piece of gum paste that we are going to be working with. So, I'm going to take a piece off... I always have my shortening near by. And I put a little shortening and knead into it. We need to get this nice and soft. It works best at room temperature. So the heat of your hands, giving it a little bit of kneading, and it's ready for coloring. Now before we start with either the paste or the gel colors that we talked about earlier, I always work with these vinyl gloves. You can get them at drug stores or even your discount stores in the health and beauty department, and they're just helpful. They just keep the coloring you don't want all over your hands. So, I always use that and I always liberally apply some shortening. Get this nice and warmed up. Now I prefer the gel over the paste, but if you were to use the paste you would use just a toothpick, and always, always start small and you can always add more. But if you go too dark you could just add more white gum paste into it and keep kneading until you get your desired shade. So we're going to start, and I think for this size I'm going to give it two dots. It's just to your liking. Like I said, start light, and you just knead it in, and you keep going until there's no more color on your gloves. You can see right now I've got plenty of color on my gloves. Keep kneading it until all the marbling goes away. And I'm liking the way this is turning out. If I would have thought this was not dark enough, I would just keep adding another little dot of color and kneading it in again. And if I would have thought it was too dark, I would just add some more white gum paste and knead it in. And it's definitely ok; it's like art, to mix the right colors to get the right shade, the shade that you like. And I don't see any more marbling. Sometimes I pull it apart to make sure I don't see anything, and it looks nice and smooth and I'm happy with that. And that is how you color gum paste."