How to Make Natural Food Coloring Using Everyday Ingredients

Food coloring allows us to bring new life to intricately decorated sugar cookies, gelatin desserts, and the frosting used to decorate layer cakes and cupcakes—and so much more. They’re a fun way to bring a pop of color to a recipe. But many store-bought food colorings are made with synthetic chemicals, and to be honest, they don’t taste very good. Natural food dyes are an easy alternative to make at home. Everyday fruits, vegetables, and spices are easy to turn into either liquid or powdered food colorings that you can feel good about using in all of your baking projects. We spoke with longtime Martha Stewart contributor and baking expert Jason Schreiber to get his expert tips.

Types of Natural Food Coloring

Like any other food dye, natural food coloring comes in two forms: liquid or powdered. It’s all a matter of which ingredient you’re using to make the dye. Something like beet or carrot juice (or really any other type of liquid) will first need to be cooked down into a concentrated syrup. Powders are easily made by grinding the ingredients into a fine powder.

Liquid

If you’ve ever used liquid food coloring, you’ve probably noticed that this type can be quite thick, especially the gel-based options, which are similar to the consistency of honey. Natural liquid food dyes are most often made with fruit and vegetable juice or a fruit purée (this would be something like berries that are cooked down to release some of the moisture, puréed, and strained through a sieve). Water-based dyes are not uncommon either—these come about from blooming or steeping something like saffron threads, coffee grounds, or tea in water. 

Either way, the liquid needs to be reduced to concentrate the color. When reducing fruit juice or something like fresh-pressed turmeric, Schreiber notes that you can run into a number of complications, including discoloration. “Most natural dyes will lose their vibrancy and can even turn brown when heated,” he says. That’s not to say that it’s not possible. The first step is to adjust your expectations accordingly. Natural food colorings are never going to be as vibrant as ones that use synthetic dyes, so whatever ingredient you use is going to yield a much paler color palette. However, the best way to maintain the integrity of the ingredients’ color is to reduce the liquid as slowly as possible.

Powder

Since powdered dyes don’t need to be heated, there’s no risk that they will lose their color tones. “I’ve had the best success by using ingredients that are already 'concentrated' colors, like powdered freeze-dried fruit, spirulina, and turmeric,” says Schreiber. He notes that powders can be very effective because the colors are already vibrant, and they don’t have as much of an effect on the texture of the final product. 

Many fruits and vegetables can be purchased in powdered form; otherwise, they can be freeze-dried and pulverized in a coffee or spice grinder until very fine.

Ingredients to Use for Natural Food Coloring

The world is your proverbial oyster when it comes to the foods that you choose to achieve every color of the rainbow. Schreiber makes one very important observation: Many natural dyes change color when they react with acids (like lemon juice or vinegar) or bases (like baking soda). It’s common practice when using natural dyes on fabric or yarn to adjust the pH of the solution to achieve different color effects, and the same is true when using natural food colorings. For instance, an acid will make purple cabbage liquid veer toward a red hue; a base, blue. Likewise, acid will make turmeric juice an even more intense orange; a base, yellow. 

Below are some ideas of ingredients that you can use to create their delicate colors. 

• Red: Beet juice, tomato juice, purple cabbage juice mixed with an acid
• Pink: Strawberry or raspberry purée, powdered freeze-dried strawberries or raspberries
• Orange: Turmeric juice mixed with an acid, carrot juice, sweet potato purée, paprika
• Yellow: Turmeric juice mixed with a base, ground turmeric, saffron
• Green: Matcha powder, green spirulina, spinach purée
• Blue: Purple cabbage juice mixed with a base, blue spirulina
• Purple: Blueberry juice (note that this has a tendency to burn or brown when cooked down), blueberry purée, purple sweet potato purée
• Brown: Espresso, brewed tea, cocoa powder

How to Make Food Coloring

For liquid food colorings, start by reducing the juice or infused liquid (like tea or coffee):

1. Place one cup of liquid in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let it simmer, skimming away any foam that might appear at the top, until the liquid is reduced to about 1/4 cup.
2. Let it cool completely, then use about one teaspoon of the reduction per 1 cup of icing or frosting.

For powdered food coloring:

• If you're not using an already powdered ingredient, place the ingredient (like freeze-dried berries) in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until it is finely pulverized.
• For every cup of icing of frosting, use 1-2 teaspoons of powder. Optionally, you can also dissolve these powders in 1-2 tablespoons of water before using.

How to Store Natural Food Coloring

To store liquid dyes, transfer them to individual airtight containers and keep in the refrigerator for up to three weeks. Note: they might begin to lose some of their vibrancy as they age. 

If processed correctly, powdered dyes can last for several years in airtight containers at room temperature.