I usually grab a few fuchsias when they get stuck in the clearance section at the store every spring. This year, the random variety I grabbed actually made giant juicy fruit!
The fruit is rather insipid- slightly sweet and mildly green tasting so we mostly ignored it all summer. Somehow one of my kids missed the memo that it was edible and hadn't touched it all summer until today. She thought the taste was meh but immediately tried some different things with it.
This is what she discovered-
It colors your skin a lovely vibrant fuchsia color!
Rubbed on sidewalk, it's more of a greyish purple.
Squeezed into
water (with some mint leaves for flavor), it turned the water a deep royal blue. It was gorgeous!
When she added some citric acid, the water turned a bright pink!
My first thought is, Yay! It's like the butterfly
pea flower, only I can actually grow this successfully! I'm wondering if it could be dried and powdered and used as a food color in frosting and baked goods. The flavor is so mild that you can't taste it added to water.
I'm also very curious what color it would end up dying different fibers and how colorfast it might be.
Sorry, I didn't think to take pictures and we don't have any more fuchsia berries at the moment. Hopefully we will get a few more to experiment with before the frost.
Has anyone played around with these before?
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