How to tint powdered sugar (icing sugar)?

From my experience coloring regular sugar with ordinary food coloring, drying it, and then crushing it in a mortar yields good results. Be careful to not use too much food coloring though, or it will never dry properly! I haven't tried to see if cornstarch might save it, but as long as you do the drying properly and don't overdo the amount of color it shouldn't be necessary.

As for the powdered food coloring option you suggested, I found a source that said they don't have to be wet to take effect, but it doesn't say anything about whether the eaters will be colored =)

I think i can help you here if anyone is interested. It's an easy process that costs almost nothing. No grinders are required.

The issue with using liquid colours is they cause the icing sugar to clump, hence the need to dry the sugar and then grind it. Using powdered colours still require a liquid to be added so you're back at step one.

Grinding whilst colouring is the answer. Here is the trick:

Take some rice and add the food colour to it. You'll need a slightly more brightly coloured rice than you want the sugar but make sure the rice is not wet. With a gloved hand, completely mix the colour into the rice. Add the icing sugar and thoroughly mix. The rice will break the sugar down as it clumps whilst at the same time giving you the colour.

Now you just sift the rice from the icing suagr and Viola!

Colored sanding sugars can be run through a spice grinder to gain this effect. Note, you will lose much of your intensity of color.

PS - Make sure your spice grinder/coffee grinder is VERY clean.

You could try using decorating dust such as cake decorators use to apply color to flowers and other decorations on cakes. I know it is most common in metallic colors but it does come in other colors as well. Just be sure to look for dust that is labeled as "food safe," as some are not intended for eating.

Taken from Edible Glitter

To make colored sugar:

1/4 cup granulated sugar (not brown, not confectioners, castor sugar or superfine sugar is ok) 1/2 teaspoon of liquid food coloring

1: Mix the sugar and food coloering

2: spread out on parchment paper (I added this step)

3: bake at 350 F for 10 minutes.

4: store in air tight container

you can also do the same with Salt if you want to make colored salt. If you use castor sugar or superfine sugar, it won't have that same white background that confectioners provides as a backdrop for the coloring, but you could put confectioners down on your treat first, then put the colored sug