I made naturally colored blue sugar hearts! 😀 Aren’t they beautiful? And they’re fast and easy to make: You’ll just need two ingredients.

Ingredients:

• sugar
• homemade natural blue food dye (made with red cabbage and baking soda)
• optional: rum or peppermint essential oil

Mix sugar with some drops natural blue food coloring. Mix till the sugar resembles wet sand.

I wanted to make dark blue sugar hearts, therefore I used just natural blue food dye as liquid. But you can substitute some of the food coloring with some drops of water to make light blue sugar hearts. Be careful not to add too much liquid or the sugar will melt.

Use a rolling pin or your hands to spread and pat down the natural blue sugar mixture. Now cut out hearts with a heart-shaped cookie cutter.

Carefully transfer the sugar hearts to a plate or parchment paper.

Let your all-natural blue sugar hearts dry for some days at room temperature and they’ll have the consistency of regular sugar cubes. Don’t use your oven to dry the blue sugar hearts or the blue will turn green.

While drying, the natural blue sugar hearts will change their color slightly: from greenish blue to purplish blue. Red cabbage dye is ph sensitive: Raw, unprocessed sugar seams to be slightly basic, while white and brown sugar seams to be slightly acidic (source).

If eaten pure, the dark blue sugar hearts taste slightly of red cabbage – I think using less blue food dye and making light blue sugar hearts would fix that – but dissolved in tea or coffee, the red cabbage taste isn’t noticeable. Or add some drops of rum or peppermint essential oil to the blue sugar mixture: Then you’ll have rum- or peppermint-flavored blue sugar hearts which don’t taste of red cabbage.

The natural blue sugar hearts glitter like ice! 😀 Here you’ll find more recipes for naturally colored sugar sprinkles and sugar hearts.