Homemade vegan natural food coloring is easy and beautiful to frost cakes, cupcakes and so much more. Dye your own with açai, matcha, charcoal and beet powder!
Colorful desserts are so much more fun. We always love color in our food, of course. We're always shooting for the full rainbow of produce every week. But we especially love a beautifully decorated cake or cupcake.
Of course, store-bought food dyes aren't exactly the most appetizing when it comes down to it. Who even knows what makes red food coloring red? In fact, some people are outright allergic to food dyes!
We're all for avoiding chemicals in our food, whether you're allergic or not.
But we also don't want to sacrifice beautifully colored desserts. That's why for this Halloween (and for all future food coloring occasions), we're making our own homemade natural food dyes. They're way easier than you think, incredibly beautiful and so much healthier.
Natural Food Dyes
Before you dive into that Air Head, here's a paragraph that might give you pause:
"Many believe that the use of petrochemicals, hydrocarbon derivatives and coal tar in artificial food coloring can cause such disorders. Food colorings are also believed to have an adverse effect on the immune system and male fertility, besides having association with health conditions like, asthma and allergies." (Pioneer Thinking)
Let's be honest. The fact that most commercial food colorings have numbers in their names is a little concerning. Who really considers "FD&C blue 1" food? There's certainly good reason to avoid eating processed food coloring in our diets.
Luckily, natural food coloring options are not only in fact natural, they actually pack even more health benefits. The colors on our vegan cupcakes come from matcha, beets, açai and charcoal. Are are 100% naturally-occurring ingredients that are considered superfoods.
How to Make Vibrant Natural Food Coloring for Frosting
Each of these beautiful vegan frosting colors starts with our basic dairy free buttercream recipe. Just like a classic buttercream, it's easily whipped up in an electric mixer. Of course, you can also do it by hand.
And our vegan buttercream recipe is only 5 ingredients, including salt. There's really very little reason to buy store-bought frosting. But if you're in a serious time crunch, we like Simple Mills vanilla frosting.
After creaming a light and airy batch of buttercream, divide it into four bowls for each of the four natural food dye colors. Add just a few more simple ingredients to each and voila: a rainbow of vibrant naturally colored buttercream!
Homemade Purple Vegan Food Coloring
Our beautiful purple cupcakes are colored with açai powder. Açai has been enjoying a bit of a fad moment here in the states for the past few years. But it's actually a berry native to South America, especially Brazil.
Fresh, it resembles a blueberry. While we mainly get açai powder and frozen concentrate shipped up here, Brazilian have been eating fresh açai berries for centuries.
Açai is packed with antioxidants and fiber. In fact, it's one of the highest antioxidant fruits in the world. We use açai powder all the time for smoothies and smoothie bowls.
A little goes a long way. It's a bit tart, and always provides the most beautiful purple hue. That's why just a couple of tablespoons mixed into your vegan buttercream gives you a bright and vibrant purple frosting.
The açai powder will leave some purple flecks in the frosting that give it a wonderful texture too. I love the heathered look on these gluten free cupcakes.
Homemade Natural Green Food Coloring
We couldn't make natural vegan food coloring without including green in our palate. It's one of the most common naturally-occurring colors and we're always being told to eat more of it 🙂
The secret to our gorgeous green natural food dye? Matcha of course!
Matcha is concentrated green tea powder. Again, a little goes a long way. Its flavor can be a little more polarizing than açai. Some call it grassy. And that's why we only use a scant 2 teaspoon to color our buttercream. It's shocking how so little goes so far when you start mixing.
We also added a dash of cinnamon into this one to ensure that none of that harsh grassy flavor came through. The cinnamon won't affect the color at all. Instead, it improves the flavor of your vanilla buttercream.
If you haven't tried matcha before, I strongly recommend trying a homemade matcha latte with your leftover powder. A bit of almond milk, vanilla and sweetener of your choice makes a delicious and warming alternative to coffee.
Homemade Black Food Dye
Black food dye isn't even in the usual palette you find at the grocery store. And why not? It makes such a statement on a dark chocolate cupcake. And now that it's nearing Halloween, it's time to start playing around with black-colored food.
We achieved this deep dark color with charcoal powder. This one might be a surprise. But yes, charcoal powder is 100% edible, and in fact quite healthy. Activated charcoal is the digestible kind.
Charcoal naturally attracts impurities and absorbs them. In small quantities, it's thought to help reduce toxins in the body. Many people use it to clean their teeth too! Hey, if it can remove toxins from your stomach, why not use it as a stain-remover on your canines?
Homemade Natural Orange Food Coloring
And last but certainly not least, our orange natural food dye. This one has a couple more ingredients than the others, but the resulting shade is so worth it.
Beet juice gives most of the color. But since we didn't want to go fully red, we also added a hint of turmeric. Turmeric is a powerful anti-inflammatory food. And if you cook wit it, you may also know how much it likes to stain things yellow/orange. We used that to our advantage here.
Again, since no one wants to bite into a fresh homemade vegan cupcake and taste beet or turmeric, we called in a few extra ingredients. Cinnamon overpowers any spice flavor from the turmeric. And some extra vanilla extract ensures that you taste vanilla buttercream, not beet.
When to Use Natural Food Coloring
We're in the Halloween spirit, so we colored buttercream frosting with vibrant natural food dye for spooky cupcakes. We used our vanilla cake recipe and our classic chocolate cupcake recipe.
Both cupcake recipes are vegan and gluten free. If you go for vanilla cupcakes, see the note in the recipe for baking instructions to turn the cake into cupcakes!
There are dozens of fun ways to use these natural food dyes, however. Why not try:
- Dying vanilla cupcake batter before you even frost them
- Making festive pancakes for holidays. Green for St. Patty's day or Christmas would be fun!
- Coloring coconut whipped cream on your strawberry shortcakes or sundaes
- Turning regular vanilla ice cream into a rainbow
- Dying homemade macarons for Easter, or for any other Sunday
- We can think of quite a few uses come April Fool's day! Green milk with your cereal, anyone?
Let us know what other fun and tasty ways you think up for these natural vegan food coloring recipes!
Vegan Buttercream Frosting dyed with Natural Food Coloring
- Total Time: 15 minutes
- Yield: Frosting for 30 cupcakes 1x
- Diet: Vegan
Description
Homemade natural food coloring is easy and beautiful to frost cakes, cupcakes and so much more. Dye your own with açai, matcha, charcoal and beet powder!
Ingredients
Dairy Free Buttercream Frosting
- ½ cup vegan butter, softened
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- 1 ½ tsp almond milk or dairy free creamer
- Pinch of salt
Add to above recipe for each color:
Purple:
- 2 tbsp açaí
- ½ tsp more almond milk
Green:
- 2 tsp matcha
- 1 tsp more vanilla
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp salt
Black:
- 2 tbsp charcoal
- ½ tsp more almond milk
Orange:
- 1 tsp beet juice
- ½ tsp turmeric
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp extra vanilla
- Healthy pinch of sea salt
Vanilla Cupcakes: use our Vanilla Almond Cake Recipe. See note
Instructions
- Make a big batch of frosting by creaming the butter and powdered sugar in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add in the vanilla, milk/creamer and salt and beat to combine thoroughly.
- Divide the frosting into four bowls and add the ingredients for each color, mixing thoroughly until evenly colored. Adding more powders will darken the colors, if you prefer.
- Frost only fully cooled cupcakes.
Notes
To translate our vanilla cake recipe into cupcakes, pour the dough into lined cupcake pans. Reduce bake time to 29-31 minutes, until set in the center. The recipe will make 28-30 cupcakes.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: No Cook
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 60
- Sugar: 6.2 g
- Sodium: 192.5 mg
- Fat: 3.3 g
- Carbohydrates: 6.4 g
- Fiber: 0.1 g
- Protein: 0.3 g
Keywords: vegan food coloring
Tamara
Where do you buy your charcoal powder?
Lexi
Usually just amazon! Search for activated charcoal powder.
Connie
Hi would the buttercream taste like matcha, turmeric etc? My family doesn’t like cinnamon so I can’t use that. By the way, is it possible to add the “colour powder” into the cake? Would it work? What do you recommend for red colour?
Lexi
Hi! The less you add, the less strong the flavor will taste. Since the buttercream has quite a bit of sugar, it tones down the flavor of the matcha and turmeric. Yes, you can definitely add to a cake, although the color tends to bake out quite a bit, so it won't be nearly as vibrant as it is in this buttercream. I would suggest beet powder for red!
Jesin
Hello - Thanks a lot for these wonderful options. I love colours, but hate putting artificial colours to food. These are some cool options - I am going to try the black and yellow options now. Just want to know - if the bright colours will last for a couple of days? Or will they lose their brightness after sometime because the vegetables in them react with air? I was planning to make some cupcakes but eat them after two days only.
Thanks a lot
Lexi
Hi! Yes, the colors should stay quite vibrant for several days.
Miss Tank
Thank you, it's marvellous...I'd also add spirulina for the green (I usually add some pistachio butter or mint or even tart apple juice powder for flavour, and for blue...red cabbage and blue spirulina (organic blueberry powder), Dragon fruit and beetroot (strawberry powder), carrot juice or powder, turmeric and beetroot for orange...(as well as pure orange zest and natural extract flavouring and organic orange juice powder, and a pinch of cardamom and/or nutmeg), turmeric and saffron for yellow (usually with cardomom, nutmeg or cinnamon), acai and charcoal for purple (raspberry powder) and black (either plain or espresso or cocoa), just as you've indicated....beetroot for red, candied watermelon or strawberry powders for flavouring)...
I get all my berry and fruit powders online, as well as natural flavourings and extracts; they're available non-alcoholic with vegetable glycerin as well...it's natural, all-fruit and quite easily available..
I use cashew cream, cacao butter and coconut oil/solids/cream, blanched almond flour, maple syrup, powdered monk fruit sugar, maple or coconut sugar and plenty of vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste for the base....
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Lexi
I love this, these are all such fantastic ideas! Thank you for sharing!
Wen
Great idea! Am filing for future reference.
In the meantime, if you enjoy a challenge (and would like to help me out), I'm looking for a healthful vegan recipe for *white* icing that dries hard and that will tell me how to make it so it won't turn yellow in a couple of days. (I've read that white icing will do that if not colored with white food coloring.) I want icing, not frosting, so I can pipe it onto gingerbread people cookies. I've found a recipe for the icing -- but not for the white food coloring or an acceptable purchased product for same.
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Rikia
It’s egg white or egg white powder that makes the icing you describe. Closest vegan thing would probably be icing sugar and water so it dries to shaped sugar, but I haven’t tried it sorry
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Rhonda
Love being able to make natural food coloring. Usually I buy them. Does the matcha tea need to be dissolved before adding?
Thank you!
Lexi
Nope! Although it's always helpful to sift the matcha so you don't end up with any lumps. Hope you enjoy!
Technolong
So many possibilities!Getting excited to start creating chilled and vibrant summer treats! These little packets of natural plant based powder bring the Color Game! ?????? What cold creative treats will you be making? #colorkitchen
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Sara
I LOVE this post! I'm not vegan personally, but using all natural ingredients in my homemade frosting is something I'm totally interested in! These colors aren't muted at all; they're absolutely vibrant and gorgeous, and I cannot wait to try them out for myself. Thank you so much for sharing!
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Lexi
Thank you, Sara!! They don't even have to be used for vegan frosting - you can totally use them to color regular frosting, too. Hope you give them a try!
Sophie
Really need this now. I am baking some Christmas cookies and this is a great choice.
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Lexi
Thanks, Sophie! Can't wait to experiment with some other natural colors for Christmas cookies.
Marisa F. Stewart
I simply love the colors - I know it sounds funny but they have a natural look to them whereas the regular dies look like they are overly saturated. The green and purple are my favorite. I'm definitely trying this out.
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Lexi
Thank you so much, Marisa! Isn't it incredible how great the natural dyes look? And you don't even need that much! Hope you give them a try soon.
Linda
Wow! These natural food colorings are awesome and creative. I can't wait to try this recipe.
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Lexi
Thanks so much, Linda!
Tammy
I've saved and pinned this post to revert back to when I make color frostings. I never do because I hate using artificial colorings but with this guide, I'm excited to try them all! The colors are so vibrant too which I don't usually get when I try to use all natural ingredients...so thank you for this! 😀
Lexi
Aw thank you, Tammy - appreciate that!
Chloe Gaskin
Could you make vegan buttercream with coconut cream? I love these colours!
Lexi
Hi! I haven't tried any successful recipes that just use coconut cream, but you can definitely use a mix of coconut cream and vegan butter! Or if you want a lighter consistency, you could do a whipped coconut cream using these color combos 🙂
Mama Maggie's Kitchen
Wow! I will be needing this on my desserts. Natural vegan food coloring for frosting is healthier to use especially for our kids. Thanks for sharing this.
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Lexi
Thank you!!
Jamie
I love this idea of using natural food coloring for frostings! It definitely makes me feel better knowing that there are healthy ingredients and antioxidants in the frosting, not to mention the added flavors!
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Lexi
Thank you, Jamie! No need to use artificial ingredients when nature provides such gorgeous colors!
Heather
I love making cupcakes but I've been looking for more natural ways to color my frosting lately. I can't wait to try these. Especially the charcoal powder for Halloween!
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Lexi
Thanks, Heather! The charcoal is definitely my favorite for Halloween!
Nicole
Wow! I'm very impressed with how vibrant the colours of the icing are - and all using natural ingredients. I'm especially drawn to the matcha and açai flavours because my husband would LOVE them! Thanks for these great tips and ideas!
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Lexi
Thank you so much, Nicole! I'm always surprised by how vibrant the colors are, too. Hope you give them a try!
Jacqui Debono
I love these and not only will be making them, but I have shared with all my vegan friends!
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Lexi
So sweet, thank you so much, Jacqui!