Rainbow cakes are everywhere on pinterest right now! And since I’m experimenting with natural food colorings at the moment, I thought I’d try to make rainbow cake with natural food coloring! 😀
I used different berries – strawberries, raspberries, red currants, black currants, blueberries and blackberries – spinach, peas, red cabbage, carrots, cherries and damson plums.
I used my basic vegan cake batter recipe. Because I wanted to try out so many different natural colorings, I made cupcakes.
Homemade Natural Food Coloring
I used 1 tbsp fruit puree per 1 tbsp cake batter except where stated otherwise.
Purple Food Coloring: Blueberry, blackberry, red cabbage, cherry
Pink/ Red Food Coloring: Raspberry, red currant, strawberry, damson plum
Orange Food Coloring: Carrot
Green Food Coloring: Pea, spinach
Lavender Food Coloring: 1 tsp red cabbage juice (without baking soda) per 1 tbsp cake batter
Blue Food Coloring: I tried to color 1 tbsp of the cake batter blue with 1 tsp of my homemade natural blue food coloring (made with red cabbage and baking soda), and another with 1 tbsp pureed blueberries, but both failed: Both cupcakes were brown/ bluish gray after baking.
Natural blue colors are often heat sensitive, therefore I baked the cupcakes just at 160°C (320°F), but the beautiful blue cake batter turned brown before it was baked through.
Update: -> Natural Blue Cake Experiment
Most of the muffins were very dense : either too much fruit or the wrong muffin tin – the cupcakes baked in paper cupcake cups were alright.
Because I wanted a brightly colored natural rainbow cake I used 1 tbsp natural food coloring per 1 tbsp cake batter, so the cake layers taste of berries, spinach, carrot etc. But feel free to use less natural food dye per cake batter.
I made vanilla buttercream to fill the rainbow cake.
Especially the berry layers tasted delicious with vanilla buttercream filling.
You can also use homemade natural food dyes to make rainbow ice cream cake.
This is so interesting. I love the colors that you developed!! I’ve only used natural dyes for dying Easter eggs. Thanks for sharing with SYC.
hugs,
Jann
Thank you! 😀 I also dye Easter eggs with natural dyes every Easter. I especially like red cabbage and onion skin. What natural dyes do you use for Easter eggs?
And I’m still trying to make blue cake: till now my trials turned brown, gray, purple or green after baking. 😉
This is so cool! Thanks for linkin’ up with What’s Cookin’ Wednesday!
Thank you! 😀
Your rainbow cake looks great! The colors you created with natural dyes are wonderful. Thanks for sharing at Snickerdoodle. Pinning.
Thanks 😀
Oh my goodness this is the coolest most interesting thing. You did so much and I loved seeing and learning the results! Very cool 🙂 Thanks for sharing with us at Funtastic Friday!
Thank you so much! 😀
This is amazing. I’m often put off bright coloured cakes and icing because of all those E numbers . I’m pinning for reference, I’d love to try some of these out. Thanks for sharing at #HandmadeMonday
Thanks for pinning, Julie! 🙂 Let me know when you try it out!
Amazing stuff – and so pretty!! I am so fascinated by your experiments with natural food colours. Thanks for linking up to #CookBlogShare 😀 Eb x
Thanks, Eb! 😀
Great stuff. You do not see much about natural food colours on the web and the colouring in rainbow cakes has always put me off making them. I have given a you a mention with a link to this page on the next #CookBlogShare which goes live tomorrow,
Thanks, Jacqui!
Wow, amazing. Thank you so much for the rainbow cake. I hope to be abroad for my grand-daughter’s birthday & if so I will make the cake + the pistachio ice-cream
Thanks Clare! 🙂 I’d love to see a picture if you make the cake and ice cream!