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DECORATING WITH PLANT-BASED FOOD COLORS

If you are seeking a true dye-free baker, we can use plant-based food colors, but we do add a whitener/brightener to our base glaze and base buttercream. Some say it is not a dye as there are no FDA dyes in it, others say it is. We do not claim to be a dye-free bakery.  

I've been experimenting with TruColor (made in California) plant-based food color powders. It's been pretty interesting learning how these behave in comparison to traditional food colors. To save you the boring science of it all from varying pH levels of water used to developing color shades and time and temperature, I'll sum it up:

They have an odor in their powder form in the jar. The red colors are made with beets, radishes and red carrots, the yellow with turmeric, etc.  Remember this and keep reading!

When coloring small amounts of glaze for stenciling or diluting them to paint designs on glazed or buttercream topped cookies no smell or change in flavor is noticeable in this quantity of product used. We do however have to use considerably more of the product to achieve the colors desired. 

To color a full batch of glaze used to dip the cookies in (as opposed to white glaze) it takes multiple bottles to achieve the correct color and this also can result in an off flavor and smell. Turmeric glazed cookies, anyone?  There are other brands that may result in better or no taste/smell quality, but large quantities of product are still needed to achieve colors and this may be cost-prohibitive as plant-based food colorings are more than double the cost of traditional food coloring.

All in all, I think these are a great alternative to the traditional food colorings when used in small applications. All the cookies you see next to this post were done with TruColor plant-based food coloring and they are very pretty!