Decorate Valentine Cookies With a Healthy Food Dye
By The Living Healthy MomIt’s almost Valentine’s day and many moms are planning on decorating pretty red and pink cookies, muffins, and/or cup cakes for their sweeties.
I agree that it is a lot of fun to make pretty cookies that are decorated in pinks and reds, but the problem is that food dye in frosting recipes is very unhealthy for kids and adults to eat.
- Why not make your frosting recipe healthier by using a healthy food dye?
The great news is, you can still decorate your cakes, cookies, muffins and cup cakes a light pink and/or a bright red without using any food dye in your frosting recipe. All you need is a “beet.”
Beets Are A Simple, Natural Red Food Dye-Wonderful To Use in Frosting Recipes
For a living healthy approach to decorating cookies, when you making your favorite frosting recipe and it calls for a red dye or a pink dye, all you have to do instead is substitute beet juice. Instantly, you will have a much healthier frosting.
This is a healthy frosting made with cream cheese, honey and beet juice as the food dye. It is such a pretty pink color.
Beets are naturally sweet, very healthy for you and have such a beautiful pink to bright red color to them; all depending on how much you use.
- Don’t worry, your frosting will not taste like beets.
- You will only need 1/2 teaspoon to a tablespoon of beet juice, depending on the color you are looking for.
- Beet juice secretes juice right after you open it. You will even notice your hands turning red holding the beets.
Two Approaches To Using Beets As a Healthy Food Dye To Make Your Frosting Recipe
1. JUICE THE BEETS
If you have a juicer, simply put the beets in the juicer and make beet juice. You can also freeze beet juice and use in the future when you are baking cookies and need a healthy food dye.
2. CUT THE BEETS INTO LARGE PIECES AND MIX IN BOWL
Color created by mixing a beet with the frosting
If you do not have a juicer, then you can use the second approach.
Health Risks of Using Red and Pink Food Dye in Frosting Recipes
If you are wondering about why food dye is not healthy for kids, I recommended looking at the comprehensive chart that the “Center for Science in The Public Interest” created detailing the most common food dyes and the health impacts that are directly. Why Are Food Dyes Harmful
Another great article to read is: Food Coloring
Happy Valentines Day!











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[...] little digging uncovered two main approaches to using beets to color frosting: 1) juice the beets or 2) stir chunks of beets (which can easily [...]