Glossy magazines are full of pictures from mouth-watering dishes decorated with colored creams. Do cooking masterpiece won't be difficult. The ingredients for food coloring are natural. Therefore, they will not cause harm to health, unlike additives in store products.
To make red food coloring:- You will need one small beetroot. Peel it from the peel and rub it on a grater. Put the root vegetable in a saucepan and fill it with water, close the lid. Put the broth on low heat and cook for 45-60 minutes. Add 1/2 tsp. citric acid to add color saturation. When the broth has cooled, strain it through a sieve.
- Crush currants, cherries, cranberries or raspberries. Use the resulting juice.
- Use the pulp of tomatoes or boil red cabbage. Also, a red tint is obtained from red paprika powder and boiled pomegranate juice.
- Chop the saffron leaves. Transfer them to a vessel and add vodka. For children's dishes, use warm water. Put the mixture in a dark place for 1 day. Strain the tincture.
- Grate the lemon zest. Put the mixture in cheesecloth and squeeze until juice is obtained.
- Mix turmeric powder with water. The proportions depend on the desired intensity of the paint.
- Finely chop red cabbage. Transfer it to a saucepan and cook for 15-20 minutes over low heat. Strain the decoction.
- A blue or purple hue is given by juice from blueberries, grapes or eggplants.
- Purchase indigo carmine dye at the pharmacy. This is a dark blue paste. Dilute it in water to the desired shade.
- Grind spinach through a meat grinder or through a blender. Wrap the resulting mass in gauze and squeeze. This will make it light green color.
- To get a rich color, put the spinach in a saucepan, cover it with water. Cook over low heat for 35-40 minutes.
- A pistachio shade will occur when mixing blue and yellow dye.
- Grate 100 g carrots and transfer them to the pan. Fry the carrots over high heat, adding 100 g of butter. Switch off the stove after 2-3 minutes. When the mixture has cooled, squeeze it through cheesecloth. If there is no time for cooking, use store-bought carrot juice.
- Take the zest of an orange or tangerine and grate it on a fine grater. Next, strain the juice through cheesecloth.
- Mix sugar with water in a 5:1 ratio. Fry the mixture in a pan until a dark mass is obtained. Constantly stir the sugar mass with a wooden stick so that there are no lumps. Well-roasted sugar gives a bright brown tone. Turn off the stove, add some more water. Strain the solution through a sieve.
- A pleasant chocolate shade is given by chocolate, coffee and cocoa powder.
Try making food coloring at home, it will add sophistication to your dishes. Your table will be perfect for any occasion. Just remember that homemade food coloring has a short shelf life. It is better to use it immediately or store it in a dark place.
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 cook 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 cream 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.
The finished cream can be transferred to a 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
Protein cream cake decorations look no less beautiful and elegant. 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.
Housewives can use store-bought blue dye in their kitchen. 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 a 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 it is boiled and mixed with a small amount of vinegar or citric acid, the result will be a brown or fuchsia color.
Finely chop the carrots before use and sauté for a few 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 water 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 give him a cold red color with a purple tint.
If you need to get a deep purple, inky dye, use blackberries.
And add blackcurrant syrup to the protein mass before baking, the result is a pale 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 greens 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 you can cook them in advance and keep them 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
Every hunter wants to know where the pheasant is sitting. A familiar phrase from childhood, which always helps out if you forgot the sequence of the color spectrum. And if this question can be dealt with only with the help of a playful statement, then the question of food colorings also not easy to solve. What is the difference between dry and liquid dyes? Why does chocolate curl up when dyed? What is better to paint mastic or cream for a cake? And this is only a small part of the main questions about food coloring. But it is with this ingredient that every confectioner encounters most often! Let's look into the details.
Let's start with the classification. All food colors can be divided into several groups: dry, liquid, gel, kandurins, sprays, food markers. In addition to the variety of release forms, dyes are divided into two large (and very important!) Categories according to their chemical basis: water-soluble and fat-soluble. About which of the two categories this or that dye belongs to can be read on the packaging. If the dye is fat-soluble, markings are usually present: choco color (from the manufacturer FoodColors), oil candy color (from AmeriColor), the word "Lacquer" (from Russian manufacturers) and others like it. Water-soluble ones are often not labeled, so if you don’t see a special sign or inscription on the package, then this dye is definitely water-based.
From the school course, we all know that the different density of water and oil (and products containing it) does not allow them to mix with each other. One of the most common confectionery mistakes is to add the first dye that comes to hand to chocolate. Of course, it may magically happen that exactly the right dye comes into your hand, but most likely not. The chocolate will curl up, turn into a plasticine mass and go to the trash. We decided to ease your painful thoughts a little when choosing one or another dye when coloring different products and made a visual diagram.
Dry dyes.
Powdered dyes. Most often, before use, they are diluted in water or vodka. Used to color biscuits, creams and chocolate. In the latter case, the dye is not diluted with water, and do not forget about the marking (oil) on the package. In addition, all dry dyes can be used in dry form as a pigment. They are used to color mastic or wafer paper, for example, when creating sugar or wafer flowers. With the help of dry dyes applied with a brush or sponge, smooth and natural transitions can be achieved. Among other things, dry dyes are an important assistant in the preparation of French macarons. No excess moisture, uniform coloring and economical consumption.
Gel dyes.
Universal water-soluble dyes that are suitable for coloring biscuits, fondant, icing, creams, meringues and more. They have a thick texture, rich color, good hiding power. Gel dyes - the most essential tool to create unique cakes. After all, it is among them that you can find the necessary shade for cream or mastic. The palette of gel dyes is very diverse, especially AmeriColor. In it you can find not only several shades of pink or green, but also unusual “dusty” colors with the mysterious names “moss”, “pumpkin”, “cypress” (we will talk about them in more detail next week!).
liquid dyes.
Less dense, flowable water-based dyes. To a lesser extent, they are suitable for coloring creams and mastics, but they can still be used to color almost any mixture. You should be a little more careful with them, as excess moisture can destroy the texture of the product being dyed. Overdoing liquid coloring when making cupcakes can result in an unstable cream, and the mastic can become overly soft and sticky. But liquid dyes are ideal for direct dyeing. With their help, you can draw on the surface of the cake, gingerbread and mastic. Also, the use of liquid dyes when dyeing biscuits (for example, for red velvet) is a more rational and economical solution.
Kandurins.
A special type of dry food coloring with characteristic shiny particles. These particles come in different fractions, that is, grinding, which makes some kandurins look like solid shiny dust, while others consist of a powder with sparkles inside. They can be used both dry and diluted with water or vodka. With their help, any product can be given a brilliant shade. Kandurins are usually applied to the surface of cream, mastic, icing, chocolate. The most popular shades of kandurins: gold, silver, copper. It is these shades that are indispensable when creating metalized cakes. And if in the case of chocolate, Kandurin is recommended to be applied in a dry form, then on a cream or mastic in a reconnoitered one. In these cases, the gloss will be maximum, and the coverage is uniform. Also, kandurins are indispensable for the finishing decor of cakes and cupcakes - a few strokes of a dry brush are appropriate for almost any design.
Sprays.
In addition to traditional types of dyes, dyes in the form of sprays are becoming especially relevant. The most commonly used are gold, silver and mother-of-pearl options. With a spray, you can achieve a uniform metallic color. You can spray on any, absolutely any surface: chocolate, mastic, pasta and, most importantly, cream. After all, there is no other option to cover the cap of a cupcake with glitter, for example.
There is a wide range of synthetic dyes on the shelves that help create rich dessert colors.
It is very easy to work with coloring compositions of synthetic origin, they are stored for a long time, and do not deteriorate under the influence of external factors (humidity, sunlight and temperatures of various indicators).
However, if you prefer to use exclusively natural compounds as dyes, even if it turns out a more faded color, but 100% there will be no allergic reaction in children, then you should learn how to cook them from different natural products familiar to the body.
Dyes of natural origin are isolated from animal and vegetable sources by a physical method. Such coloring compositions are not actually subjected to chemical modification, only in exceptional cases when it is necessary to keep the product longer (under factory production conditions). Root crops, leaves, and other plant products are often used as raw materials for obtaining the natural origin of food coloring.
Under mass production conditions, dyes of natural origin are produced in the form of granules, powder formulations, liquids or oils.
The brightness of the coloring compositions in such a production process depends on the time of year for the collection of products, the conditions of its growth, and other things. The main advantage of coloring compositions of natural origin is the fact that they can be prepared independently at home. Take a look around, because for sure in the refrigerator or on the shelves in the pantry you will find a whole set of everything you need.
Natural dyes: a list of primary colors
For coloring culinary products natural food formulations The primary colors used are yellow, red and blue. Yes, they are not as bright and saturated as products of synthetic origin, but they are clearly safer for the human, and especially the children's body.
Shortcakes are baked like regular biscuit bases until done. And here we have such beautiful ones.
Now consider in more detail the origin of each natural color:
Preparing food coloring is very simple: finely chopped selected ingredient is poured with acidified water into a small amount. The mass is put on fire and brought to a boil, after which the composition is filtered. Another option for obtaining red juice: the product is finely rubbed or kneaded in a mortar, filtered from the pulp.
AT pure the blue color comes from indigo paste mixed with starch. On the scale of food production, Indigo carmine paste (black-bluish color) is used, which forms a pure blue solution. The indigoid dye is isolated from certain types of molluscs.
Although orange colors for coloring culinary products can be obtained from a number of products, both familiar and familiar to us, and inaccessible. Consider all types of ingredients presented in the photo, you will recognize each of them, only not everyone will have to find it on the shelves of retail outlets.
When it comes to creative culinary inspiration, you can experiment and try to make new colors for coloring desserts.
The right dessert pleases the eye and awakens the appetite with its very appearance - just add a few bright colors. This is where colored creams for cakes without dyes come to the rescue.
From scratch
To decorate homemade cakes, pastries and other pastries, you can use a variety of. Looks impressive and holds its shape well protein cream. For its preparation egg whites separated from the yolks, add a pinch of salt, a little citric acid and beat into a strong foam. Sugar or powdered sugar is gradually introduced into the resulting mass. Very popular variety oil creams. The simplest is prepared from butter with the addition of egg yolks, powdered sugar and water. You can replace the eggs with condensed milk, and you get at least appetizing decoration. Very tasty and quick cream made from sour cream with a fat content of at least 35%, powdered sugar and vanilla.
How to prepare a cream without dye for decorating a cake, or rather, without synthetic coloring additives? To do this, you need to explore the stocks of products available in the kitchen, which will serve as natural dyes for us. By processing them in a certain way and mixing them with cream, you will get original colored cake decoration, tasty and absolutely harmless.
sun on the cake
Bright yellow color can be obtained most different ways. The easiest is to add some fresh to it carrot juice or raw egg yolk. Saffron and turmeric have a rich yellow color. To make a natural dye out of them, you need to carefully grind the seasoning, dilute it in water and insist for a day. After that, the mixture can be added to the cream. Iridescent yellow hue gives lemon peel. To do this, finely grate it on a grater, wrap it in gauze and squeeze out the juice. The juice from yellow buckthorn fruits can also be used as a natural dye.
All shades of red
The persistent coloring properties of beets are well known. By adjusting the saturation of its juice, you can easily prepare an excellent dye-free cake at home, from pink to deep red. To do this, grate a small beetroot, pour water over it and cook for an hour. To make the color intense and beautiful, add a pinch of citric acid to the broth. Do not forget about all kinds of red berries: raspberries, strawberries, lingonberries, currants, cranberries, dogwood. By the way, jams, jams and syrups based on them can be used to create creams of red shades with the same success. cherry and pomegranate juice they also do a great job. And red wines will give the cake cream not only a pleasant color, but also exquisite aromatic and flavor notes.
orange joy
Carrots not only have a rich orange color, but also generously share it with others. To do this, grate it and fry a little in butter in a ratio of 1: 1. As soon as the carrots soften enough and the butter turns orange, remove the pan from the stove and let it cool. Next, we transfer the resulting mass to gauze and carefully wring it out - the natural dye is ready. You can resort to the help of an orange and color the cream with fresh citrus juice or chopped zest. You can also experiment with the already mentioned yellow and red dyes and mix them together.
sweet coolness
How to make cream for a cake in a cold color scheme? Blue and purple shades give the juice of blueberries, blackberries and grapes of rich dark varieties. Leaf decoction red cabbage will produce light blue shades. Eggplant can be used as a dye. First you need to freeze them a little, carefully cut off the skin and squeeze the juice out of it.
There are many green vegetables, and spinach has the best coloring properties. Pass it through a meat grinder or wrap it in clean cheesecloth and wring it out well, and you will get a natural dye of a delicate green color. Want to achieve a more intense shade? Squeeze the spinach juice and boil it for half an hour.
Chocolate palette
The easiest way to get a noble brown color is to mix the cream with regular coffee, cocoa powder or melted chocolate. However, you can resort to a more sophisticated method - using burnt sugar. To do this, granulated sugar is diluted in water in a ratio of 5: 1, the mixture is poured into a pan and put on a small fire. We stand the mass on the stove until it acquires a rich brown color. Then remove it from the heat and pour in a little more water in a thin stream. Then carefully filter the resulting dye. The main thing is not to overdo the sugar, otherwise hard lumps will form in it.
As you can see, making a cream without dye for a cake is quite simple. And most importantly, you can do without harmful artificial additives. This decoration is sure to please all your household members, especially the little ones with a sweet tooth.
