Colour My Sponge Happy

I love to bake with colours, and today I'm going to show you what impact different food dyes can have on a bake. 
​
Bear in mind, when you add dye to a cake mix, the colour will always come out paler once it's baked. Also, thicker dyes, or pastes, are much more effective, instead of the runny liquid ones which come in small plastic bottles, and are the least expensive ones in the shop (unfortunately!). You get what you pay for!

The red food dye on the left is the cheap, runny kind. You can see it's red, but in comparison to the blue bowl next door, it's barely coloured. The blue mix is using a thicker liquid, not quite a paste, but it makes so much difference to the strength of the colour. 

TOP TIP: Be careful not to put to much dye into your mix as the extra liquid will change the chemistry of the cake. Too much liquid could be a disaster!

​So this is what my cakes came out like from this experiment...

You can see the blue, better quality dye has faded only a little, almost maintaining the colour it had in the mixing bowl. The red dye, however, has faded into something not even resembling red. It pays, obviously, to get decent quality food dye!

Luckily for me, on this bake I was looking for a Red Velvet chocolate looking cake, so this worked pretty well for my Red Velvet, White And Blue cake for USA Independence Day!

Lots of people steer clear of artificial colourings all together, preferring a natural tint. The main one I use, and would really recommend, is using beetroot juice. When you buy cooked beet in the store, the juice, more than likely, goes down the sink. Why not put it into your cake for a gorgeous red tint? This also works well with home made bread - turn your sandwiches into 'superfood' sandwiches!

I've also coloured my sponges in the past with blueberries to get a nice purple dye from fresh fruit, a watery turmeric mix (only a little bit, be careful!) for yellow, and raspberry jam is nice for a pale pink icing with red seeds in it - very pretty. 

What other things can you think of which would make a good natural dye?

Lou x

​280 Bakes

---