Ok I made my mini cakes the other night. I did not have a purple icing color so I used blue and pink to get the lavander color I wanted. When I was packing them up to take them to my sister in law I noticed that some had turned blue???
What causes this. No one cared that some polka dots were blue and it was a freebie but I really would not want this to happen if I sold a cake.
Any ideas?
Unfortunatly the lights in your house and the sun will discolor the violet. The only way that I have found to keep the color purple is to use a powder color in the icing or buying the icing/fondant already colored. I still would cover the cake until I delivered it and keep it out of the sun light/window. HTH
This is from How To Color Icing here on CC... can't find it, but I had it saved in my files. Anyway it says...
Lemon juice or cream of tartar can cause colors to change, for example, violet will become blue. If the recipe has one of these ingredients in it, omit it. In addition, water can cause color changes depending upon your geographical area. If buttercream icing is made with water, replace some
of the water with milk or milk powder.
HTH
Ok I made my mini cakes the other night. I did not have a purple icing color so I used blue and pink to get the lavander color I wanted. When I was packing them up to take them to my sister in law I noticed that some had turned blue???
What causes this. No one cared that some polka dots were blue and it was a freebie but I really would not want this to happen if I sold a cake.
Any ideas?
Patticakesnc
What i've noticed, is that no matter what, purple and pink on fondant and gumpaste fades. IF you keep pink and purple in a dark place they will resist fading.
BUT they do fade very quickly, i did a cupcake cake with pink and purple hearts not so long ago and they were fine when i arrived for delivery, but they had a really bright light as i was setting up the cake, there was a spotlight that was pointing RIGHT at the cake, and believe it or not, the darn things started
to fade as i was setting up. I told them to turn the light off. It did take a while to set up b/c it was about 90 cupcakes to put on a stand and set up the topper cake etc. Last time i went to the place i buy supplies, i was told that there is a purple that was fade resitant, BUT i didnt get a name for it. I have been told that powdered colours work better, BUT i've never tried it.
Nati
I work in a supermarket bakery and it never fails - if I put a cake with purple flowers out, by the next day, they are blue. Same with airbrush - the purple fades to blue and pinks...well, they just turn almost white. I have to use darker pinks to get them to stay nice looking by the end of their shelf lives. Of course, none of that really matters anymore since it's fall now and I've been TOLD I MUST make all the cakes in my case fall colored! (I wouldn't want an orange and red birthday cake...even though I love fall...but whatever, I'm tired of fighting with them lol)
Someone told me years ago that when they took the #2 red food dye off the market (also YEARS ago), that impacted the red food colorings. That's why we have to use SO MUCH red color to get a deep deep red. I have no idea how true this is, but I'm old enough to remember when I didnt' have that problem! 
Purple is made up of red and blue, so the red portion of the coloring just doesn't hold very well. Lighting can definitely affect it. When my sister got married 15+ years ago, her wedding was a rainbow wedding. I had 7 tiers of cake to transport and the largest tier was not in a box. The sun coming in thru my van windows hit the purple roses and faded out the red. I actually stopped by my cake supplier store and asked the owner to look at them and she was the one who told me about the #2 red food dye. The roses actually looked pretty cool......the red only partially faded so they looked like a 2-toned color! Everyone kept asking me how I did that and I just smiled and said "trade secret"! 
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