How to Make All-Natural Homemade Food Coloring

With the holiday season coming up soon I wanted to to make some colorful Christmas cookies to send as gifts.  How do I do that without using food coloring?  So I did a search to find out.

Natural food coloring can be made using vegetables and fruits to make food dyes like beets, red cabbage, carrots, blueberries, and spinach.  

This article from Food and Wine tells how to do it: https://www.foodandwine.com/fwx/food/diy-food-coloring

A surefire way to avoid artificial food dyes is to make your own natural versions. There are tons of different ingredients you can use to make food dyes and plenty of recipes online to suit your specific project’s needs. Here are a few great ideas to get started.

Yellow and Orange Food Coloring

Golden beets and/or turmeric serve nicely as the basis for yellow food coloring. To make, follow these instructions from Studio DIY: Peel and dice the beet, then mix with ¼ cup of water and a teaspoon or two of turmeric. Soften the beets by microwaving the mixture for approximately 30 seconds; blend, strain, and use the resulting liquid as your dye. The juice from pulverized mangoes and saffron are also good options. If you choose saffron, be careful not to overpower other flavors in the dish. If you’re going for a slightly more orange hue, you can’t go wrong with carrot juice.

Here are some videos that explain how:







Make a Red Velvet Cake without Food Coloring:

One thing to mention about plant-based food coloring is that the color doesn't always last. I'd bought some nice plant-based food dye to make playdough for my niece. The beet-red faded out to a dim orange-ish brown...and of course the purple that I'd used that red to make, no longer looked purple, either. I think the color faded in about 5-7 days. So, if you're making cookies for an event, you might want to make the red ones the day before...

Thanks for sharing your experience.  I have about decided since my grocery store does not sell beets to make snickerdoodles instead.

Also since I posted this I found that wellnessmama recommends "India Tree Natural Decorating Colors"  then when I went to Amazon I found several companies now sell Natural Food Coloring Powders.

I thought I would share this search in case anyone might be interested:

Amazon Link to Natural Food Coloring