28 May DIY All Natural Food Colours
How many of you have appreciated the colour of a red velvet cake or the ice blue frosting of a cake? Well, it definitely looks beautiful but then to get that look you would need to add food colours. Now the chemicals in the food colouring could be a deterrent for some people. However, you need not worry as it is now possible to make natural food colours at home.
Source for Colours
To make these colours you would need some natural ingredients from your pantry or fridge.
Well identifying the ingredients to make the colours is very easy. Because the natural colour of the ingredient would be the same as what you wish to create.
See some examples here, strawberries for pink, Beets for a lovely red colour, coffee for brown, spinach for green or turmeric for yellow and so on. At the same time, orange rind pulverized into dry powder would make for a lovely orange color.
How To Make Food Colours At Home?
Now after identifying the source, how about the process to make it? Natural food colours could be in liquid or powdered form. It depends on the use on which form is most suitable.
You can either buy the powdered form of fruits or vegetable or make use of fruits that are freeze dried. You just have to pulverize it into fine powdered form. Or you could add them into a small amount of liquid like milk or water as required.
For some other, it is best to use juice, pureed or water based. Now, water-based though is useful for only ingredients like saffron, which you can infuse with warm water for best results. If you have a juicer you could also juice the ingredient to use or in some cases to get concentrated liquids, you can puree the fruit and strain it. Whichever liquid method you follow, make sure to reduce the liquid to get concentrated colour. Meanwhile, for some ingredients like coffee powder, you can use them directly to the icing to get the desired colour.
Tips to Use the Colours
It can be added to the icings and frostings. While you can also use some of these colours in a cookie dough or cake batter, you need to take into consideration the fact that heat could cause the colour to fade or turn brown.
Make a note to cool the colours themselves before using them. You should be able to save these food colours for up to 6 weeks in an airtight container or bottle. And while adding, make sure you don’t get too much of the aftertaste of vegetable or spice in your frosting.
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