Change the color for code embedded in markdown in shinydashboard shiny

Question

I have a shiny (shinydashboard) app that contains embedded markdown with a code chunk which displays in red by default. How can I change the color?

Here is a demo app:

library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)

ui <- dashboardPage(
  dashboardHeader(),
  dashboardSidebar(),
  dashboardBody(
    includeMarkdown("demo.md"),

  )
)

server <- function(input, output) { }

shinyApp(ui, server)

The markdown file demo.md has this line:

This is a `code` example.

That word "code" renders with a red font. I would like to change the color.

I messed around with extra lines in the app:

    tags$head(tags$style(HTML('
        .code {
          color: #000000;
        }
      ')))

and

tags$style(
  type = 'text/css', 
  '.code {color: black;}'
)

without success.

Can somebody tell me what I can add to the markdown or R file to change the color of the embedded code?