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Home › Recipes › Blog

Updated on September 30, 2026 by Liz Marek · This post may contain affiliate links · 1 Comment

Edible Oil Paints

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Skill level: Newb
Learn how to make beautiful edible oil paints.

Recipe

Edible oil paint recipe for cake decorating tutorial

Edible Oil Paint Recipe

A great recipe to create your own edible oil paints which work just like real oils, but are completely edible and usable on cake designs.
Print Recipe Rate Recipe
Prep Time: 5 minutes minutes
Total Time: 5 minutes minutes
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Servings: 1 teaspoon
Calories: 43kcal
Author: Liz Marek

Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon vegetable shortening start with 1 teaspoon and add more as you need
  • 1 bottle of powdered food coloring start with a little bit, add more to make color deeper
  • 1 piece of parchment paper

Instructions

  • Place the vegetable shortening on a piece of parchment paper.
  • Sprinkle food coloring onto the vegetable shortening.
  • Use an offset spatula to blend the color and shortening together, smashing the vegetable shortening down, then scraping up the color and shortening mix, and smashing it down again, to make sure the color thoroughly mixes with the shortening.
  • Add more food coloring as needed until you have reached the desired color.

Notes

If using edible oils with a stencil to apply a design to a cake, you need to buff the color off first before taking the stencil off the cake.
Use a paper towel or facial sponge to lightly dab the color so that when you take the stencil off the cake it won't disrupt the design.

Nutrition

Calories: 43kcal | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 1g
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About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Janet says

    August 29, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    5 stars
    These worked perfect for my Picasso art themed birthday cake!

    Reply
5 from 2 votes (1 rating without comment)

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Hi, I'm Liz! I'm a cake artist and recipe developer, and I won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 with a hyperrealistic Santa. I write foolproof recipes that explain why things work, not just how.

I also teach full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted cakes, at Sugar Geek University.

More about me →

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