Natural Food Colors

[Free Rider]

I tried my hand at decorating a cake last night, using natural food color. I couldn't tell the difference between the blue and the red. Anyway, does anyone have any advice about natural food coloring? I saw India Tree sells some. Do they have the same problem as my other natural one? Anyone tried them?

[felixe the dog]

Natural food colors? Hmmmm.............. When I need to use natural food colors, I SQUASH BUGS! . It really does work, if you get cockroaches, they squash green, bull ants squash red, and blowflies squash blue. From there I just mix my primary colors and away I go!!

[Free Rider]

Oddly enough, I can't seem to find any natural green food color. Now one would have thought that the easiest one. Anyway, it turns out the the Seelectea blue is actually red, but the yellow and pink are good. I have placed an order for the India Tree natural colors, so we'll see what happens with them.

Unfortunately, I am vegetarian as well and would not take too well to including blood in a cake decoration, even if it is the likes of bugs.

[qahtan]

Well apart from the obvious food colouring that you can buy in tiny pots, if you can't use that then what about, this in only an idea, but could you use Koolaide, you could mix a small amount with some hot water and add it drop by drop for the depth of colour required. There are some fabulous colours in Koolaide. Emerald green from lime is one.
I have used it to dye fibres, and when my daughter wanted a pair of shoes to match her dress she said, do your Koolaide trick mum.
I did and we matched the colour perfectly, is it worth a try. ;-))) qahtan

[Free Rider]

Yes but the obvious food coloring in tiny pots is not natural. Safe to say that KoolAid probably has no natural ingredients either. Cake decorators don't seem to care, but I prefer a cake that, well, looks pretty much like a cake.

Dying fabrics... certainly the food coloring in tiny pots would be good for that.

Oh if only I could art with sugar like Notter.

[qahtan]

Yes ofcourse you are right, I doubt that Koolaide is natural, what was I thinking.
OK then Beetroot, parsley, raspberry, blackberry. now all these will give you colout but not what you are looking for, beetroot on fabric does a lovely shade of grey, not sure about the other foods.....
As I have done solar dying with natural colour on fibres.
But you only need a tiny speck to give you colour for cake decorating.
What do other cake decorators use. When I did cake decorating, I used Wilton's paste colours. it was mainly just pastel colours.

qahtan

[Free Rider]

Ja, Wilton's is all artificial. I like the pastels I got from the natural yellow (saffron) and the pink (strawberry), but the other colors from that particular manufactuer were no good. The blue (blueberry) turned out to be red, for instance. I could hardly tell the difference between the strawberry and the blueberry.

I really thought green would be an easy color to find, but tonight my roses will be pink and yellow with orange vines.