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Natural Food Coloring for Frosting

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Natural food coloring dairy-free frosting

I can’t believe that Ashley is 10 years old. It seems like a big deal kind of birthday. I remember feeling that way when Zoe turned ten. But Ashley’s birthday has always been a source of dread for me, because she had complications the day she was born, and we didn’t know if she was going to survive. It was one of the worst days of my life. This year though, Andy made the suggestion that we, “take back the day.” (He’s so awesome.) This idea really resonated with me, and to my surprise I let go of the pain I felt around this day every year.

I celebrated for Ashley like never before. My heart lifted, and I didn’t think about the past. I thought about this day. This day that I get to have RIGHT NOW with my girl, Ashley. We jumped up and down all day, singing Happy Birthday to Ashley about a million times, and having so much fun. We asked her what she wanted for her birthday dinner and she said chicken. So we went out to dinner for some awesome chicken, and had a great day.

Ashley’s birthday party is also her sisters’, Zoe and Ginger’s birthday party, because all of their birthdays are a week apart . (What is it about October? 😉 ) This year Zoe and I looked at Pinterest and decided a rainbow cake with natural food coloring would be awesome. Because… rainbows!

My friend Brittany asked me how many cakes and batches of frosting I tested to get this cake right. When I told her she said that I was the best mom ever. I love being told that I’m a great mom, but the truth is I didn’t just do it for my kids. I knew you would love this frosting with natural food coloring, and that was as much a part of my motivation as my kids were. I imagined how happy you and your kiddos would be to have frosting colored with REAL FOOD 🙂

How to Make Natural Food Coloring for Frosting

Important notes

  • To make all five colors you will need 3 batches of my frosting.
  • Each color uses 1 cup of frosting, which is enough to frost one 7 inch cake.

White Frosting Recipe from my book, The Paleo Chocolate Lovers Cookbook

1 cup palm shortening (I buy in bulk from Tropical Traditions. A small tub is on iHerb)
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup coconut flour, sifted
1/4 cup almond flour
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon vanilla liquid stevia

  1. In a mixing bowl combine all of the frosting ingredients with a handheld mixer.

Pink

1 cup White Frosting (above)
2 teaspoons beet powder (found in the bulk section at health food stores, and online)
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

  1. In a mixing bowl combine all of the frosting ingredients with a handheld mixer.

Orange

1 cup White Frosting (above)
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons goji berries (found in health food stores, and online)
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons coconut flour, sifted

  1. Soak the goji berries and the water in a small bowl for about 20 minutes.
  2. Puree the berries and the water in a mini blender or food processor.
  3. Place a fine mesh strainer over a mixing bowl. Pour the goji puree over top and press it the puree through the strainer. Scrape the back of the strainer with a flexible silicone spatula to get as much as possible into the bowl. Discard the seeds leftover in the strainer.
  4. Add the frosting, and coconut flour to the bowl, and combine the ingredients with a handheld mixer.

Yellow

3/4 cup White Frosting (above)
1/4 cup Orange Frosting (above)

  1. In a mixing bowl combine all of the frosting ingredients with a handheld mixer.

Blue-Green

1 cup White Frosting (above)
1 tablespoon 2 teaspoons spirulina powder (found in the bulk section at health food stores, and online)
1 teaspoon lemon juice

  1. In a mixing bowl combine all of the frosting ingredients with a handheld mixer.

Purple

1 cup White Frosting (above)
1/2 of a small purple cabbage
1 tablespoon coconut flour, sifted

  1. Roughly chop the purple cabbage and put it into a small pot. Add water to almost cover the cabbage, and bring to a boil.
  2. Boil with the lid on for 20 minutes.
  3. Use a slotted spoon to remove the cabbage from the water.
  4. Lower the heat and simmer (lid off) to reduce the liquid to about 1 tablespoon. Keep a close eye on it, so that you don’t accidentally reduce it to nothing, and burn the pot.
  5. Transfer the reduced liquid to a small jar and put it in the fridge to cool.
  6. Add the cabbage liquid, and other ingredients to a mixing bowl and combine with a handheld mixer.

More Notes about Natural Food Coloring For Frosting

  • I have also heard that turmeric works for yellow. I was worried my kids (or their friends) would be able to taste it, so I used some of the Orange Frosting (made with goji berries) instead. Also keep in mind that turmeric stains if you prefer to use it.
  • I have also heard that spinach works for green. I was excited to find spirulina powder instead, saving myself a few steps!
  • I have read that you can add some baking soda to the purple (cabbage) coloring, and make blue coloring. However, when I did this it was more silver than blue.
  • The beet powder was the only natural food coloring we could taste, which is why we covered it up with almond extract, and then it was yummy 🙂
  • My frostings have the least amount of (natural) sweetener you will find anywhere, making them the healthiest possible frostings. Two cups of my frosting contains 1/2 cup of honey as opposed to typical frostings which contain 3 CUPS or more of (refined) powdered sugar.

Be sure to sign up to my new Spunky Newsletter for more recipes, news, and subscriber giveaways!

♥, Kelly

 

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Comments

  1. Is it possible to replace the almond flour? I have tree nut/ peanut/ soy allergies. Thanks!

      • I wonder if you could make a flour out of sunflower seeds? Whiz them in a food processor for a bit to make them into a powder (just not too long or else it will become Sunbutter).

  4. Awesomeness! Thanks so much for sharing your food coloring recipes. I can’t wait to try them the next time I make a cake.

  5. I want to lick that spoon, and I don’t like frosting, but yours looks delicious (especially as it is low in sugar)

  7. Thanks so much for sharing! I have tried using Beet powder for icing before and every time I have found it to lose it’s pink colour quickly becoming beige. Did this not happen to yours? I have wondered if it’s because I put it in the fridge.

    • Maybe, but I put my frosting in the fridge too, and it stayed pink. I tried using beet powder to color the cake, but the heat of the oven turned it beige. So, temperature definitely affects it.

  8. Thank you for sharing your recipe.
    I am starting to plan my youngest ‘ s 4th birthday and was looking far a plain white frosting that wasn’t pure sugar

  9. This is fabulous Kelly! Totally fabulous!! I am so happy you could reclaim the day! Blessings & Hugs! -Sandy

  11. These are gorgeous and glorious! I have used matcha tea for a pretty green as well. I do love my spirulina though!
    Thanks for sharing. I have some other no sugar frosting recipes on my blog you may like too!
    evolutionofaparty.com

  12. What you wrote about your girl made me cry. And yes, only a great mom like you would do that! Well done! Our children are worth living for! xx

  13. oh and don’t forget hibiscus! I use the flowers for tea, but you can grind them into powder or use the water from the tea! It is a gorgeous pink/red

  14. For my oldest daughters cake last year I made pink and purple frosting by grinding up freeze dried strawberries and blueberries and mixing them into my usual cream cheese frosting recipe. They tasted awesome!
    I will have to get some goji berries to make orange for my middle girl. Orange is her favorite color.

  17. I want to make a rainbow layer CAKE, can I use the colors posted here or would you recommend something else?

    • That was my original plan too, but I found that the heat of the oven made the natural colors fade to beige and gray 🙁

  19. Wow! This is awesome! I love cake decorating and baking and switching to Paleo made that a little more complicated. Thanks for sharing these new options! I can’t wait to give them a try. 🙂

  20. Hi Kelly! The cake you made with these frostings is beautiful. I see that you used your paleo chocolate cake recipe to make it, I’m wondering how many batches of the cake you needed to make your layered cake and what size pans you used. Thanks!

  21. This is brilliant and perfect timing! I was trying to figure out how to do a rainbow cake for my daughter’s 4th birthday and was about to settle on using the India Tree colored sugar over paleo chocolate cake pops. I wasn’t sure the taste of the turmeric, so I will have to give these a shot (beforehand) to see how they turn out. Gorgeous pix 🙂

  22. For red use pureed rasberries pressed through a sieve to tremove the seeds. Tastes much nicer than beets

    • I tried ground freeze-dried strawberries. They didn’t work (too pale), so I don’t think raspberries would work, but maybe I’m wrong.

  24. Ooh, yay! This could inspire my holiday baking. I know red is notoriously difficult to achieve though. Do you think spinach would result in a more green than the blue-green of the spirulina?

  25. I made this cake today and it collapsed! I feel like the weight of everything squished all the icing out and then it just all fell. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it work better? Should I have froze each layer after icing it? Please let me know when you have time. Thank you.

  26. Can I substitute the stevia with something else like maple syrup or agave syrup or will that color the syrup?

    • Such a tiny amount of anything else won’t be sweet enough, but you can add granulated maple syrup if you grind it into powder first 🙂

  27. I just discovered your site today and am enjoying reading thru the recipes. Just wanted to say I understand about the birthdays. Two of my sisters, myself and my mothers birthdays are during two weeks in May. You do get sick of birthday cake. But for the one cake we share, I am going to attempt the pink frosting!

  28. PALM SHORTENING? Why on Earth would such a healthy recipe take part on an ingredient that destroys the rain forests and habitats??? Palm plantations take away a football field size area every hour! Due to palm plantations the Sumatran tigers, orangutans, and many other species that thrive in these habitats will soon be extinct! I was really excited to find this website UNTIL I saw you use PALM! SHAME!

    • Hi Canella, We’re concerned about that too. That’s why we use Tropical Traditions palm shortening which comes from ProForest certified farms 🙂

  29. I just made a beautiful deep purple frosting using the juice of about 1 c of gently simmered blueberries. It only took about 2 t to color 1 c of frosting a dark violet shade. Thanks for all the natural color ideas!

  30. Hello Kelly, im dutch (live in holland) and can not find a organic palm starch here. But i would love to bake this cake for my doughter her first birthday on sunday. Do you have surgerstiions on how to replace it? Ps i have dyslectia and not a good spell checker on my i phone, sorry for the writing mistakes . Thank you! Greetings bienke

  33. oh my GOSH – THANK YOU! you have no idea how long and hard I’ve hunted the internet for a dairy free sugar free frosting recipe for my son and I (who are allergic to both) seriously NOTHING. Can’t wait to try this… how long do these keep and whats the best way to store? is it freezable do you think?

    • Thanks! I’ve never tried freezing it. I think you could keep the frosting in the fridge for maybe 2 weeks. (Then let it come to room temperature so you can spread it) 🙂

  34. Has anyone tried casava flour? Casava flour is made from the paddles of the paddle cactus. I think its processed 2 different ways. One way is dehydrated to remove all the water. The second is dried out in am oven on really low heat for many hours again to remove all the liquid. I hear the oven way is the best for cooking and baking. From what I’ve been told it makes me think of coconut flour and how it reacts to baked goods. I’ve also been told that it’s a very mild, easy to work with and has almost no flavor. I was just wondering if anyone else has tried it or used it for cooking
    ..thansks!!