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

My plan is to make powdered food dyes, especially since turmeric doesn’t last when mixed with water. My plan is to juice it and then dry the juice and the pulp separately. Then I will test out the juiced turmeric for foods and the pulp for textiles.
My kids especially wants to be able to decorate Christmas cookies with colors, and while this is early for Christmas shopping, it takes time to grow plants for dyes.

Saffron has traditionally been used as a dye as well as a spice.

Megan Palmer wrote:Saffron has traditionally been used as a dye as well as a spice.

Good point. I actually have some old saffron, that I might sacrifice for the color

Powdering the vegetable dye sound like a great idea, thanks for sharing that.

Not a DIY solution, but since powdering was mentioned here it reminded me of how I've used freeze dried fruit and/or veggie powders in ways those colorful sugars are often used. It works great and tastes so much better. They're also great on uncooked cookies too: cut fruit into slabs, cookie cut them into holiday shapes, dip or dust them with the powder. If you make funnels out of paper or whatever, you can direct the color to certain spots to do dots, lines, etc. as well. Freeze drying preserves the color better than dehydrating too so you can get really saturated colors. It you have a freeze dryer you could make them of course, but I don't so I used purchased ones.

May Gardner wrote:Not a DIY solution, but since powdering was mentioned here it reminded me of how I've used freeze dried fruit and/or veggie powders in ways those colorful sugars are often used. It works great and tastes so much better. They're also great on uncooked cookies too: cut fruit into slabs, cookie cut them into holiday shapes, dip or dust them with the powder. If you make funnels out of paper or whatever, you can direct the color to certain spots to do dots, lines, etc. as well. Freeze drying preserves the color better than dehydrating too so you can get really saturated colors. It you have a freeze dryer you could make them of course, but I don't so I used purchased ones.

That is my conclusion too. Only problem is, that my freeze dryer has broken down. It looks like the heating unit’s sensor broke. I did talk with the manufacturer and it should be fixable.
Until then, I am piling up herbs, fruits and flowers in my freezer. I do still have some flowers in stock so I could start now, but right now I am also juggling canning, and writing.
I will definitely try this with sugar though. I was thinking about using half sugar and half egg whites, with maybe a little water.