Homemade food colouring

I'm wanting to make my own food colours for icing the christmas cake. I've had a bit of a search and found some ideas. Red=beetroot juice, Green-spinach. I think I'll just use the two colours. I've got fresh beetroot and wondering if I can substiute chard for the green as I've got plenty of that in the garden?

Has anyone tried this? And do you get a proper colour rather than a pale wishwashy sort? I'm also wondering about quanitities of raw product I'd need.

Any help appreciated.
Cheers

 

I wouldn't use Chard, thats one of the few things that I throw away the water after cooking to loose the oxalates in it.

 

Cochineal is made from crushed beetles so that would be organic!
I'd have thought that the beetroot would be quite strong in colour. My hands certainly stain a lot from it when ever I handle it.

 

Excellent idea. I would think the beetroot would come out a strong, rich pink and the chard would be a khaki green grey. You could try blackberry or blackcurrant juice to see if you get a better pink/red/purple shade. Or blueberries.

I have found basil gives a lovely fresh green (when whizzed into pesto) but oxidises on contact with the air, turning - grey-khaki.

My solution would be to plan a Christmas cake icing design based on a pink/purple/grey colour scheme. Would look good against white and you can liven it with touches of silver. Or do an opulent purple and gold one.

This my cake from last year. It has a sparkly star set on a browny black background. Can anybody guess what common garden substance I used for the background?

 

soil?

cake looks seriously yummy btw

 

Heh heh, a finely sifted bit of compost, maybe? Wrong, I'm afraid!

When I say "substance" I mean an item or things many gardeners would be able to obtain from their garden.

 

Good for you Gay Gardner to want to do this. If you google around you can find natural food coloring (from foods ) in powder form. But anyway. I have used beet root to make color for cakes. Actually the beet root was historic for use in red velvet cake. I just take some beet root and simmer cook it for couple hours, then take the beets out and reduce the liquid by low simmer to half. Then freeze the liquid in ice cube trays: brake them out later into a plastic freezer bag, use as needed. But have not gone beyond this for color.
In general I do avoid eating any (man made food color) as I can taste the color and find it really yucky, not only, its not good for you. Oh, and in a red velvet cake there is no taste of the beet root.

 

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/7053/red-velvet-cake.aspx

That's a pretty fine shade of red on that cake.

 

Puzzled why post this recipe showing man made RED FOOD coloring when this discussion is about NOT Using man made food coloring.

 

There's no need to shout - it was a genuine mistake.

http://familyspice.com/recipes/recipe/?recipe_id=215

I trust this recipe meets with your approval.

 

Thanks for the recipe. But the thread is about making natural food color.

 

Thanks for replies. Zigs thanks for that, had no idea so have looked it up for future reference, very useful. Fab looking cake Mad. Redstar I agree the fake colourings do have a bit of a weird taste hence my search for an alternative. I think I will go for white icing and then the decorations in red/green. I'll give the beetroot a go, but also have some elderberry jelly I made which is very staining so might be good so I'll do a test with each and see which is best For the green I'll have a go first with spinach as see how that goes.

Thanks for input all.
Cheers
GG

 

You have already reminded me of that and I have already admitted my error.

 

There's a mouse that lives off Cochineal beetles, its got pink bones.

 

I had never heard of red velvet cake and it's good to see from the second recipe how effective beetroot is as a natural food colouring.