Make Your Own Food Coloring

I avoid buying anything with food coloring in it, and I absolutely refuse to add anything to my food that isn’t – well, food. Who needs ingredients like FD&C Yellow 5, or FD&C Blue 1, or FD&C Red 40 in their food? Not I, and you may not want it either.

But without some kind of coloring, frosting a cake can become a bit blah. My solution? Use real food to color the frosting. Melted chocolate will make for a nice brown decoration, but my favorite ingredient to use to color food is fruit.

Here I used cranberries to color my white frosting pink. I used a small mashing tool to squeeze the juice out of about a dozen cranberries, and then added one tablespoon of the juice to my frosting. More juice would result in a deeper color, less juice would give a lighter hue.

I used the leftovers from a cake decorating project to decorate some Baked Doughnuts from Learning to Bake Allergen-Free: A Crash Course for Busy Parents on Baking without Wheat, Gluten, Dairy, Eggs, Soy or Nuts.

Another great option for a natural red food coloring is pomegranate seeds. As you remove the seeds from the pomegranate, take advantage of the juice. What do you use for food coloring?