If you look closely at the composition of many products, you can often find artificial ingredients there. Fortunately, many of them can be replaced with natural ones when cooking. The quality of the food will not change, but rather get better. Thus, at home, you can prepare a safe natural dye.
In cooked dishes, not only taste is important, but also appearance. That's why professional chefs pay special attention to their decoration. Of course, most of all culinary specialists try on desserts and sweets. Beautiful curls creams, patterns from sprinkles are quite easy to reproduce at home, as well as color cakes and cream.
As dyes, it is better to use not purchased, but cooked with my own hands. The result is also colorful, but safer for health. Food coloring at home can be used to color creams, mastic, jellies, cakes, sauces.
Food coloring at home: cooking methods
Food coloring at home can be obtained from various vegetables and berries. For this, juice is squeezed out of them.
Pink and red shades are obtained from fresh or boiled beets. A small root crop is rubbed on a coarse grater and transferred to a saucepan. Grated beets are poured with water so that it barely covers the vegetable. Boil over low heat for 50-60 minutes. The beets are thrown through a sieve, draining the juice into a separate container. Add citric acid to the resulting liquid at the tip of the knife - so the color will be more resistant.
Pink shades can also be obtained from berries. Suitable for this: strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries. Usually they are kneaded, after which the juice is filtered through cheesecloth.
For coloring second courses, chopped tomatoes or tomato paste are usually used. You can adjust the color saturation with sour cream or cream.
How to do green dye? To do this, stock up on spinach. It is usually sold fresh in bunches or frozen in small bags. More suitable for dyeing fresh spinach. It must be washed, cut and put in a blender. Chop the spinach, put on cheesecloth and squeeze the juice out of it.
In a similar way, green dye at home is prepared from watercress. By the way, it can be used not only for desserts, but also for savory dishes. So spinach juice is used in the preparation of traditional Chinese food baozi. Spinach is added to yeast dough, in which they are then wrapped salty stuffing. The result is green round pies.
Delicate lilac color can be obtained from red cabbage. It is finely chopped, stewed with a small amount water. After that, they are crushed with a blender and the juice is passed through gauze.
The added cocoa will help color the cakes brown. It is also added to creams. Dr. way to get sweet stuffing brown - chocolate ganache. It is prepared very simply and, in fact, is a cream that can be used to layer cakes and stuff cakes.
For ganache, 200 ml of cream (preferably fat, from 33 percent) is heated to a boil and poured over 200 g of broken dark chocolate. The mixture is stirred until the chocolate is completely melted. chocolate ganache leave at room temperature for 40-60 minutes and then used as directed.
In another way, a brownish tint can be obtained using roasted sugar. To do this, sugar is mixed with water in a ratio of 5 to 1. The resulting mixture is heated in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves. The mixture should turn brownish (while making sure that the solution does not burn, otherwise it will acquire an unpleasant aftertaste). The resulting solution is used for coloring desserts and sweet dishes.
Orange color is obtained with the help of carrots. To do this, it is rubbed on a grater and fried in a small amount of butter until it reaches fully prepared. Then the carrots are filtered through cheesecloth. The resulting liquid will be the dye.
Also, the saffron spice will help to give a yellowish tint to the dough.
Sweet creams for cakes and pastries can be colored in pastel colors with jam. Currants, raspberries, strawberries are suitable for this.
Dyes for mastic: recipes
Dyes are almost always used to create jewelry from mastic. They can give color separate pieces sweets, from which flower meadows are then molded, decorative patterns-stripes, various figures. Basically, purchased concentrated food coloring is used for these purposes. Just a few drops are enough to give the mastic rich color.
Home dyes are used a little differently. The fact is that for saturation of coloring you need to use very a large number of juice of beets, carrots and other vegetables and berries. In this case, the mastic becomes liquid and for density you need to constantly stir in powdered sugar.
Of course, you can get a bright mastic by staining with juice, but then there is another minus - the finished figures will taste like vegetables or berries. It turns out that homemade dyes are not quite suitable for a rich color. On the other hand, they are indispensable if you want to give pastel shades to the pastel. All you need is some juice.
Mastic: recipe
In order for the mastic to be painted more evenly, it is better to make it yourself.
Compound:
- American marshmallow marshmallows- 200 g
- Powdered sugar -250 g
- Lemon juice -2 cl. l.
- Butter -2 tbsp. l.
Cooking:
- Put all the ingredients in one container and put in the microwave. Heat until everything is melted.
- From the resulting soft mass, reminiscent of plasticine, you can immediately sculpt or pre-paint it.
- For coloring, it is better to divide the mastic into small portions. On small pieces, you can choose the right shade by mixing the juices of beets, carrots, spinach. Having picked up the desired color, the juice is dripped onto the mastic and they begin to carefully mix and change the piece.
Dyes for mastic can be used not only for uniform coloring, but also for creating beautiful effects.
With a few drops of juice, you can give the mastic marble shades. To do this, apply a few drops of dye to the mastic in different places. Then pull it into a sausage and connect the edges. Next, you should continue to add the dye and then stretch and connect the mastic. Remember that the amount of dye to create marble patterns should be small. Also, do not knead the fondant for a long time - you can get a monochromatic color.
Homemade dyes are absolutely safe and can be used to color creams, sauces, and pastries. With their help, some tint mastic and homemade yogurt. The preparation of dyes comes down to the fact that juice or a solution is obtained from certain products, which are then used for coloring.
We have all heard about the dangers of synthetic dyes. But not everyone knows that you can get natural food colors at home.
And now let's take a closer look at the cakes from the store - multi-colored acid-colored curls, gold and silver-colored beads, and many more completely unimaginable decorations.
What is it made of? What is added as dyes? But you can decorate the cake with your own hands, using natural food coloring.
It may not be as bright and beautiful as on cakes from a pastry shop, but it will be no less tasty and safer for health.
Here are some tips about how to do natural dyes without harmful additives.
To receive you need to yellow cream take a strong juicy carrots(1-2 pieces), cut it into rings 0.5-0.7 cm thick and fry in butter over low heat until carrots are soft.
Then knead it or rub it through a strainer and mix with softened butter. Take as much oil as you got a mass of grated carrots. Add paint to the rest of the cream and you can decorate the cake.
Also to get yellow color you can also take juicy yellow pepper, juice yellow boiled beets (light color), juicy pineapple with carrot juice, mix turmeric powder with a spoonful of warm water.
green coloration can be obtained by mixing freshly squeezed spinach juice into the cream.
Also green color gives: cabbage, parsley, lettuce, cucumbers, Bell pepper, watercress, boiled green vegetables.
If you have cherries or raspberries - you can get red or pink natural dye for cream. Suitable and cranberries, as well as a decoction of beets.
Beets should be cut finely and placed in a saucepan with acidified water. Do not pour a lot of water, let it cover the beets by 3-4 fingers. Bring beets to a boil, remove from heat, let stand for 1-2 minutes and strain. Environmentally friendly dye is ready. Cool and add to cream.
For getting pink/red also suitable: red pepper, tomato, choose dark red tomatoes, boiled pomegranate juice, sweet paprika powder.
To get Orange color , mix yellow carrot and red beetroot (or berry).
If there is an orange, you can get a bright dye orange color, grated orange zest and squeezing the juice out of it.
Purple / Blue the color is obtained from: blueberry juice, fresh or boiled red cabbage juice, frozen eggplant skin juice, blackberry juice, and black or purple grape juice.
Cocoa powder will give your cream a pleasant chocolate color.
Natural dyes deteriorate quickly from the action of light and air, so they should be kept closed, in dark glass bottles, in a cool place and used as soon as possible.
When decorating cakes, pastries, cookies and other sweets, color plays a huge, one might even say a key role. Therefore, having considered what the appearance of, for example, a cake will be, it is necessary to move on to coloring the cream. You must immediately decide how many flowers you will use and divide the pre-prepared cream into this number of parts. We have already written about the fact that there are dyes of plant origin and synthetic ones. It is much easier to use synthetic ones, and often, it is with the help of them that confectioners give the cream a particular color.
So, on the tip of a toothpick, draw a tiny amount of dye, because it is in a very concentrated state, and immerse it in the cream. Stir the cream with a pastry spatula or a regular spoon. If you need some complex color that requires the addition of another dye, then you need to introduce it with a clean (new) toothpick to avoid contamination of one dye with another. Next, you need to stir the colored cream very carefully until the color heterogeneity disappears.
Now very important point
- cook enough cream (you can even with a small margin). You must be sure that the prepared colored cream is enough to decorate your cake or other confectionery. Remember that it is very difficult, almost impossible, to prepare exactly the same shade as the one you made before, even if you are sure that you remember the proportions of the dyes added to the cream.
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To give the effect of natural light, or iridescence to your decorative elements, you can use a fairly simple technique. Using a brush, apply concentrated dye of the desired colors to the walls of the pastry bag, from the end to the level where the bag is filled with cream. Then, using a spatula, fill the bag in the usual way, which we discussed in the last lesson. Now, when you deposit the cream, the decorations will turn out to be very interesting and attractive. Be sure to experiment with this technique and you will see how ingenious it is. |
To get any color, it is not necessary to have many jars with different shades. You just need to have three primary colors. With only three colors - blue, red, and yellow, you can get the whole variety of colors. This palette clearly shows what colors are obtained by mixing the main ones. Red+blue=purple. Red+yellow=orange. And so on. You can also easily achieve different color saturation by varying the amount of dye added to the cream.
In conclusion, I would like to remind you of harmony. Color must be used very wisely to prevent frivolity and to avoid bad taste. If you have any doubts about which color combinations are harmonious and which are not, you will always find the answer simply by looking around. Everything in nature is harmonious and beautiful. Nature is an eternal source of inspiration not only for artists, but also for confectioners, because pastry craftsmanship They don't call it art for nothing.
Friends, I am very glad to present to your attention an article about natural dyes for icing sugar from the graduate of the School site, the author of the project " healthy cuisine» (http://zkuhnya.wixsite.com/zkuhnya), bakers unleavened bread from whole grain flour — Maria Vasilevskaya.
The topic is very relevant. Many people have asked us about this. Therefore, Maria's research on this topic is most welcome.
So, my part is finished and I pass the WORD, or rather the FEATHER, to Mary ...
*****
What do you think is good about gingerbread? They are delicious, for sure. But gingerbread is also created in order to create a joyful mood. Haven't you noticed how children and adults sincerely rejoice when they are given gingerbread?
Gingerbread "works" even when we just see it: on the master's table, in a shop window, what can I say, even when we look at photos of gingerbread in books or on a computer screen.
And in this magical action, the gingerbread helps him faithful friend - icing, thanks to which he cheerfully tries on colorful outfits. So here they are, two halves of the whole - delicious gingerbread and his colored clothes are icing.
That's what we'll talk about today. Or rather about how to add color to it. Of course, many of you are already baking gingerbread and will say - we know how. Add a little gel food coloring and stir. That's it. All right. But here's a question for you - have you tried using gel paints instead of natural dyes? By natural we mean those that are created nature itself and man did not bring his technologies into their production. Agree, it will be very nice to treat such gingerbread baby.
I've decided to try it. And what happened as a result of my experiments, you will now find out. I must say right away that the experiments are still ongoing and the topic will be supplemented.
So general:
- Nature does not have "poisonous", oversaturated colors. The shades of the resulting glaze can be called calm, natural, pleasing to the eye with their harmony.
- Glazed gingerbread cookies do not need to be kept in the light, they may lighten a little or change color.
- To get colored glaze with natural dyes, you may need 2 or even 3 times more time than when using gel dyes (it’s better to admit it right away)))
- The resulting range of colors, of course, is not as diverse as when using synthetic food colors, but not so poor either - you can get used to it ...)
- Natural dyes often complement the taste of gingerbread and make it even more interesting.
And now to business.
Red
We will not expect bright red, poppy (or New Year's!) colors (at least for now). To obtain "red" shades, you can use the juices of red berries - raspberries, lingonberries, cherries, pomegranates. Squeeze out the juice and add it instead of water to the glaze of the base consistency. When the glaze acquires the consistency of a filling, then its color at this moment can be called pink rather than red. The brightest shade (which for me is now the most preferable) is blackcurrant. It is a fairly bright mauve color that is resistant to light and gives the glaze a pleasant berry flavor.
If we need a colored base glaze consistency, for example for contours, then there are 2 options: or we add finely-finely ground dried berry(you can buy industrial grinding or grind it yourself in a coffee grinder) and just a little bit of water, or add to base glaze juice for coloring, and then again thicken it with powder, so that it becomes approximately “like the base”.
Many sources talk about beet juice - fresh or stewed. I did not like this juice for several reasons. It still gives some aftertaste, the shade is lilac, it quickly fades on the finished gingerbread.
Green
Green is my joy. Here we can say that there are no problems with him. To tint the glaze, I use concentrated liquid chlorophyll (you can not concentrated it, there will be a similar effect). In appearance, it looks like brilliant green, a small bottle with a pipette. Dropped a few drops - basic green icing. A few drops plus some water - filling. Less drip - light green color, more - normal green. Chlorophyll gives an almost imperceptible light herbal flavor to the glaze. When eating gingerbread goes unnoticed). Liquid chlorophyll can be purchased at some pharmacies or online. healthy eating. I bought on the site https://ru.iherb.com
This is first.
Secondly, it gives the color rather swampy, dirty. I do not advise.
Yellow
It's more difficult with him. The greatest color, such a good, yellowish, can be obtained by adding turmeric powder to the glaze. If you're looking for a base frosting consistency, turmeric is fine. Add it and some water. We use it for contours or when there is not a lot of such glaze on the gingerbread. The fact is that turmeric gives a flavor that is not needed for gingerbread. If you need a yellow filling glaze, then a combination of sea buckthorn juice as a liquid and a little turmeric has shown itself well. It turns out a delicious yellowish glaze.
The advice from the Internet - squeezing the juice from the zest of a lemon has been tried. Honestly. But apparently the lemon was not very juicy, no matter how much I pressed, I didn’t get more than a few drops. The advice of adding carrot juice stewed with butter was also tested. But this option also did not take root. Somehow I don't want fried stewed carrots apply to gingerbread. And the color turned pale very quickly at the glaze, literally on the 3rd day.
Blue
I had almost come to terms with the fact that there would be no blue. It won't, and that's it. No where to get it and that's it. But quite unexpectedly, red cabbage came to the rescue. I thought it would be a purple shade, but after mixing with the glaze, the color turned out to be sky blue. I was very glad. I did not feel the cabbage taste, but I did not fill the entire gingerbread with blue icing, only individual details. We need to be careful here, let's try. Still, cabbage is not raspberry, it may have a slight undesirable aftertaste.
Gray or grey-lilac
This is where blueberry juice comes in handy. Mice, elephants, hedgehogs, etc. look good in this color. And only the icing itself will limit us, do not shift the juice so that it is not too liquid.
Brown
To obtain all shades of brown, you can safely use cocoa powder. It turns out very delicious icing, right chocolate. We also get an interesting coffee shade when adding instant coffee. We dilute a little instant coffee in a very small amount of water so that the granules disperse. And then add this thick mixture to white icing. The coffee gingerbread was also very tasty, like coffee with cream. I wanted to make some kind of gingerbread in the form of a cake or a cup of coffee with this icing ... Compared to cocoa, coffee gives a warmer shade of brown, as if a little yellow had been dropped.
I would be glad if my experiments with natural dyes are useful to you. In any case, this is food for thought. Why not treat the kids to such gingerbread cookies?)
Maria Vasilevskaya
Baking, decorated with multi-colored cream, not only pleases the eye, but also stimulates the appetite. Often, housewives add artificial dyes bought in a store to creams.
However, the abuse of products of non-natural origin can adversely affect health.
I suggest making dyes at home using the juice of some plants and other ingredients borrowed from nature.
Today you will learn how to make green cream for a cake (or blue), and also learn how to make various natural dyes with your own hands.
How to decorate a cake with buttercream
Baking a cake for a significant event is not an easy task. But you can cope with it if you show imagination and follow the recommendations of the guru confectionery art. To get started, stock up on the necessary ingredients.
50 g of condensed milk (made according to GOST); 0.5 packs of butter ( good quality); vanilla - a pinch.
Cooking:
- Soften the butter. You can cut it into pieces and leave at room temperature for 40-50 minutes. Another way, it is faster, involves using microwave oven, there the oil will be ready in 2-4 minutes.
- Using a mixer, beat the softened butter, remembering to add vanilla.
- Pour the condensed milk in stages to get the desired consistency. It is possible that the declared amount of condensed milk will be too much.
Condensed milk will add sweetness to the cream for the cake, but you need to work with a touch separately. If you want to give the cream a chocolate color, add cocoa powder.
The intensity of the color depends on the amount of powder, and it is in your power to change it both up and down.
Ready cream can be transferred to pastry bag with a suitable nozzle. But if it is not there, use improvised means and build something similar.
For example, from a dense plastic bag. It is enough to fill it with cream, and then cut off the corner.
You will get a small hole through which you will squeeze blue or any other colored cream for dessert, making various inscriptions or other elements.
A swivel stand will be a good help in the work. You will not need to be distracted by turning the dish with the cake in different directions.
With a slight movement of the hand, you can quickly turn the dessert and apply the next element with cream.
How to decorate a cake with protein cream
No less beautiful and elegant look cake decorations from protein cream. The main thing you need to remember is the absolute cleanliness of the dishes and appliances involved in the preparation of the cream.
First things first, separate the whites from the yolks. In order not to spoil the entire batch of eggs, break each unit over a clean cup, and only then pour the protein into a common bowl.
It is advisable to send the proteins to the refrigerator, they are better whipped at a low temperature.
Wash the whisk and the dishes in which you will whip the cream and pour over with boiling water.
The slightest traces of fat will not allow you to achieve splendor, which means that your work will be in vain. Drops of water on the dishes are also unacceptable; after processing, thoroughly wipe the bowl and whisk with a paper towel.
In the process of whipping, add a pinch of salt and soda to the proteins. This will save both time and your energy. In addition, citric acid will make the mixture not so sugary-sweet.
You can decorate the dessert with a snow-white protein cream, it will look festive and elegant. Some confectioners prefer to color the mass, because flowers in the natural environment are found in the most incredible shades.
What can you make natural dyes at home
Taking into account consumer demand, professional confectioners decorate desserts with cream roses and inscriptions in different colors.
In their kitchen, housewives can use blue dye bought in the store. But is it really safe for health?
Let us turn to the experience of our grandmothers, who managed to make dyes from available products. How and from what they did it, we will now figure it out.
The simplest and easy way to color the cream is to add the boiled juice of some vegetables, berries or fruits to it.
It is known that the green color is obtained due to the presence of spinach juice, orange - carrots. Beetroot gives a red color and turmeric gives a yellow color.
By combining colors with each other, you can get other shades. For example, by combining yellow and green dye, you get blue tint, which is also often used to decorate desserts.
Remember that the beets will not give the cream a bright red color. Even if you boil it, and mix the broth with a small amount of vinegar or citric acid, the result is brown or fuchsia.
Before use, finely chop the carrots and saute for several minutes in butter. After rubbing the mass through a sieve, add to the cream, and you will get a carrot-colored decoration.
A rich orange tint will give you more likely not carrots, but orange peel. You will see this when you rub a piece of sugar on the peel of this citrus.
Sugar crystals quickly absorb flavors and any dye. Experiment with lemon, lime, and you will see how the sugar takes on a new color. By the way, an orange color can be achieved with an apricot boiled in syrup.
Turmeric, or rather its saturated aqueous solution, will make the cream not bright yellow, it will have a greenish tint.
If the decoration needs to be given a yellow sunny color, use saffron. An alternative to saffron would be sea buckthorn or pumpkin.
Red or deep pink dye is obtained from fresh or frozen raspberries, cranberries or lingonberries.
Strawberries, despite the bright color, will give the cream an ugly brown-red tint. Cherry juice, mixed with cream, will tell him a cold red, with a purple tint, color scheme.
If you need to get a deep purple, inky dye, use blackberries.
Add blackcurrant syrup to protein mass before baking, resulting in a soft blue meringue.
A couple of drops of syrup will be enough to color the dessert in a pleasant color. The saturation of the hue depends on the amount of dye, adding more than usual, you get a blue color.
Blueberries and blueberries will give you purple or cold lilac.
A delicate cream shade is obtained by adding tomato paste. If you increase its concentration, the decoration of the cream will acquire a delicate orange tint.
Don't worry, the dessert won't take on a tomato flavor, the amount of coloring is too low to affect anything other than the color.
A shade of spring greenery will give spinach, it is the leader among green natural dyes. It has a neutral taste, which means that your dessert, as before decorating with cream, will be sweet and thin out the vanilla flavor. An alternative to spinach is tarragon (tarragon) and mint leaves.
Brown dye is cocoa powder, melted chocolate and a saturated coffee solution (it can be either instant or ground).
How to make dyes at home
Syrups from various berries can be boiled in advance and kept in the refrigerator in a well-sealed container. If necessary, use to give the desired shade.
Frozen products are also in use. It is only necessary to defrost the berries, cover them with sugar (in a ratio of 1: 1) and boil over low heat. Strain the mass.
Wash and chop spinach. Pour in a little water and blanch for 5 minutes over low heat. Strain the green solution.
Clean the beets and cut into slices. Boil for 15-18 minutes in water and add a few crystals of citric acid. Use strained solution.
Mint and tarragon do not need to be cooked, otherwise they will turn brown. Make hot first sugar syrup, pour chopped grass into it and let it brew.
Pumpkin, as well as carrots, chop and sauté in butter before use.
When can natural dyes be added?
Coloring from pumpkin, carrots and saffron should not be added to the dough before baking (this does not apply to meringues and macaroons.
Better soak ready-made cakes syrup so that the dessert acquires the desired shade (green, blue, pink, red and others).
Natural dyes are not added to the cream before whipping, as they do not contribute to the process. Add them at the very end and in the amount necessary to obtain the desired shade.
Multi-colored dough for dumplings, ravioli is prepared with dyes previously dissolved in water. This is necessary for uniform distribution throughout the mass.
My video recipe
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