Can I use strawberries to make a cake pink?

[gastrognome]

Hi,

I'm baking a birthday cake this weekend and thought it would be nice if I could have it coloured pink. I tried this last year by adding puréed raspberries and natural pink food colouring to the mix and the cake came out of the oven an odd grey colour. Not very appetising!

Does anybody know if using pureed strawberries in the cake mix would give a good pink colour when baked?

Or is artificial pink food colouring the only option? (though I'd rather not use artificial colours if possible.)

Not sure but I think it is due to the fruit oxidising, and I assume strawberries would too.
Maybe jam would work? Otherwise you can get natural food colouring derived from beetroot etc.

I think you'd probably have to add an enormous amount of strawberries to get a proper pink colour, and then you'd be into the difficulties of adding too much liquid to a cake mix, which could be disastrous.

I'd use red food colouring, I am sure you can get some with natural colourings in. I make Battenburg and I use a fair amount of red ( not pink ) food colouring in that to get a pink colour. You need more than you think. Too litlle and as you say, its just grey.

Why not test out on some cupcakes before?

Thanks. I have some natural red food colouring so I'll try that.

Update: I used lots of natural red food colouring. Uncooked mix was quite a strong pink colour. Cooked cake was just a brightish orangey brown.
I give up!

Have you tried beetroot juice? I make beetroot and chocolate brownies and they come out pinkish. If you just use a little juice, it shouldn't flavour the cake.

maybe you didn't use enough cause they use it here

Do you mean the crust is brown, or the cake inside? If you want the crust to be pink i would cook it in the microwave to avoid browning, silicon cake pans also seem to minimise browning, but not on the top of course, but you could put some greaseproof paper on the top.

I've used blended strawberries in a cupcake mixture and they came out pale pink.

Cake inside was bright browny orange. I didn't want it to taste of food colouring so perhaps I didn't use enough.
Crust colour not so important - was the inside I was trying to get right. I was making a sort of Neapolitan cake (meant to be one pink layer, one vanilla and one chocolate.
Covered the whole thing in raspberry cream cheese frosting and it was delicious anyway, fortunately.
Nobody else minded it wasn't pink! But next time i'll experiment with crushed berries and more food colouring.

They sell pink food colouring in supermarkets now, which makes a much better pink cake and icing than the red colouring. (all ds wanted for his birthday was a pink cake with pink icing - he was very happy despite the Numberjack 3 being a bit too red with red colouring). It needed about 60 drops in the cake and nearly as many for the icing.