Sugar Swings! Serve Some: natural dyes

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Sunday, March 2, 2014

Rainbow Cupcakes - All Natural Colors

Most of you know that I don't need an excuse to make rainbow filled treats (I mean I have a rainbow page there's been so many) but I do love how all the rainbow stuff starts showing up with St. Patty's day around the corner.

And I have done rainbow cupcakes before - super bright and colorful made with the typical food gels and colorings to make them. But since I made those awhile ago, I've also been experimenting with getting colors from natural food colorants, like in this Halloween Bundt Cake, in these Blueberry and Strawberry Striped Krispie Treats, these Whoopie Pies, and these 4th of July Madeleines.

The colors for these rainbow cupcakes are made from this stuff:

Freeze dried cranberries, freeze fried blueberries, carrot puree (yep baby food!), baby spinach, egg yolk, and crispy mandarin orange slices. I think for most of these ingredients, you'd say ok, yep I get that. Most are fruit and carrot is in carrot cake. But spinach in a cupcake? Yes, and you know what it doesn't taste like spinach at all once you add it to the cake mix. Really, it doesn't taste spinachy at all.

Start with your favorite white cake recipe or even faster, use a boxed mix. Mix up as directed but add about 1/4 less liquid. Separate evenly into 5 bowls as your white canvas!

For the colors:

Yellow: add 2 egg yolks to a bowl with the cake batter

Pink: add 2 Tbl crushed freeze dried cranberries (I put them in a mortar and pestle and go to town to pulverize as much as possible

Orange: add 1 Tbl of carrot puree plus 2 Tbl of crushed mandarin orange pieces

Blue/Violet: add 2 Tbl crushed freeze dried blueberries

Green: food process 1 cup of spinach leaves with about 1 Tbl milk. Add about 2 Tbl of the puree to the batter

That's pretty much it! Then just add a little of each color to your cupcake liners. I went with plain white so you can see the color through them. There will be tiny little pieces of the fruit/veggie but that didn't really bother me, and didn't affect the taste or texture at all.

Then bake them up as usual.

Don't they look like funky muffins this way? They would be so fun served just this way on their own.

But I had to add some homemade vanilla buttercream of course. And I pretty much love the contrast between the rainbow colors and the whiteness of the frosting.

I think these are one of my fav cupcakes now. Both the look and taste. They still taste pretty much taste like a white cake, but with a little bit of flavor that you just can't put your finger on. My kids didn't even ask about the colorings, just thought cool, rainbow cupcakes!

And although I have found you can't get super bright colors from some of the natural colorants, they are still pretty cool colors and fun!

Am I right??

Make some for St. Patty's Day (or whenever really!). Thanks for stopping by, I am hoping the weather people are wrong and I won't wake up to 6 inches of snow tomorrow. I love winter and all, but really enough is enough! Come on Spring! Have a great week!

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It

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Friday, September 13, 2013

Tri-color Halloween Bundt Cake Colored with Spinach, Sweet Potato and Beets

So it's that time again when Halloween treats show up in September! Woohoo! Although I kinda object to how soon the seasonal stuff shows up in stores, I do like seeing all the creative treats that get posted on my fav blogs and over at Pinterest of course!

One of my fav things are the Halloween cakes that get baked and decorated up. I especially love the Halloween bundt cakes. You've seen them right? Lots of swirls of green, orange, black, and purple.

I pinned this awesome one ages ago and have seen it all over the place from Cooking With Sugar

And check out this fun one from Easybaked

Or my latest favorite bundt is this Eye of Newt Halloween Cake from Just Dip in Chocolate

And although I absolutely love the colors and how bright and Halloween-y they are, I wanted to see if I could come up with something with a little less artificial coloring. (Note: not that I don't use food coloring and gels. I most definitely do, but I often like to experiment to see what is possible with natural food colors).

This cake is a doctored boxed cake and all the color for the cake come from spinach, sweet potato and beets. Yep spinach, sweet potato, and red beets! And the veggie mix replaces the oil and liquid in the boxed cake directions. Pretty simple actually.

For Green layer:

2 cups of fresh spinach (I used baby spinach)
1/3 cup of applesauce

Add to food processor and blend well.

For Orange layer:

1 small-medium sized sweet potato
1/3 cup of applesauce

Wrap sweet potato in damp paper towel and microwave for about 4 minutes. When you can pierce easily with a fork, remove flesh from skin. Mix with well with the applesauce.

For Chocolate layer:

1 can of whole small red beets with juice.
2 Tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon of chocolate syrup

Add 1/4 cup of beet juice and about 6 small beets to food processor along with cocoa and syrup. Blend well.

You'll get about 1/3 - 1/2 cup of the mashed up veggie mixes

Divide a yellow boxed cake mix evenly (or as best as you can eyeball it) into 3 bowls. Add 1 egg to each along with the 1/3 - 1/2 cup of the vegetable slurries.

Mix well

Add and swirl batters in a bundt pan (spray pan really well with floured baking spray so it releases from pan easily) and bake for about 40 minutes.

unbaked batter - love the colors!

Once baked and cooled, instead of frosting on top, I squirted lines of melted candy melts/wafers in Halloween colors. Before the candy hardened I added some eyes on top to really Halloween it up. The eyes are also made with melted candy melts/wafers. You can buy pre-made edible eyes, but it's really so simple to make them. Pipe a white circle first, then add a little black, let harden. Simple eye balls and if they are not perfect, who cares - lopsided eyes are even better for this.

I had some crushed up chocolate cookies, so added them around the bottom of the cake too.

And that's it! Cut yourself a big ole' hunk since it's filled with veggies.

OK OK, I hear ya, this may not be healthy, since it starts with a boxed cake mix, and has candy on top, but hey any veggies I can get into the kids (and my Dad!) works for me. The colors may not be as bright as those other fun Halloween bundt cakes, but I still like the look.

BTW, you can't taste any veggies in this cake if you were worried about that. It still tastes like yellow cake but just nice and moist - and way more fun than a plain old yellow bundt cake.

Plus aren't vegetables scary to kids? A perfect Halloween spooky cake!

So is it too early for Halloween for you? Are you ready for pumpkin flavored everything?? I'm not really ready, but it's going to come really fast regardless if I'm ready for it or not, so *trying* to go with the flow! Have an AWESOME weekend.

Positive thoughts to those at the Seaside Jersey Shore - they just can't catch a break.

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Striped Blueberry and Strawberry Rice Krispie Treats

So I think I've mentioned my love of cereal treats before right? Because 1) they are ridiculously simple to make (you don't even need to bake anything!) and 2) most kiddos and grown ups love them. I've yet to find someone that doesn't smile when they see a plate full of cereal treats or have a visceral aversion to them. I've made them plenty of time before like these peppermint krispie treats, fruity pebbles cereal treats, trix and chex cereal treats, and these turkey day cinnamon rice krispie treats.

To make these a little more fun and because I love color, I went with 3 batches and flavored 2 of the 3 layers. You can find the basic recipe for rice krispie treats here, but it's really so simple:

4 cups of mini marshmallows (or 1 - 10 ounce bag of regular sized marshmallows)

3 tablespoons of butter

6 cups of rice cereal

For the strawberry and blueberry layers, you'll need about 1 cup of freeze dried fruit

On a stove top, melt butter, add marshmallows until all melted, then mix in rice krispies.

The blueberry and strawberry flavors are from freeze dried fruits, which you can find everywhere now. I got mine from Trader Joe's but most food stores or even Target carries them now too. I love using them because you can add natural concentrated flavor and color without adding any extra water to your recipe.

Crush up the freeze dried fruit of your choice - I used my good old mortar and pestle to crunch them up (see I am using my pharmacy degree!)

After you melt the butter and marshmallows together, add the powdered freeze dried fruit. It will look like this when you mix it up:

Then turn off the heat and add the rice cereal; mix it well. Press it into a pan (spray the pan with non-stick spray and spray a piece of wax paper or your spatula with non stick spray too otherwise it will stick to everything you touch)

Repeat with other layers and press well between each later.

Cut into what ever fun shapes you like.

And you get a plate of some fun and colorful stripped rice krispie treats. You could even dip in some white chocolate, but I really like the simple lines of these treats. And I did mention the color and flavor are from fruit right? No food colorings or food gels used here. Not that I don't use food colors - you really can only get the bright colors you want for some projects with them. But I do like to experiment to see what I can get with natural food colors. And these definitely have the look I was shooting for!

Here are some other goodies made with natural food dyes/colors for anyone interested:

Whoopie Pies

Ice Cream Topped Angel Food Cupcakes

Red, White and Blue Madeleines

Ghost Cupcakes

Thanks for swinging by and have a GREAT week! We have a mini vacay next week and I can't wait --there is chocolate involved!

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It

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