"natural" food colours

[Freddiecat]

I have decided I want to make my DS his birthday cake - mainly to avoid some of the really horrible colours on bought cakes. I have a book from the library which has some great and easy birthday cake recipies. However I still want to make it look fun for him so would like to try and colour the icing.

Does anyone know where you can buy safe and natural food dyes? He has no allergy problems and I know that some "natural" food dyes (as opposed to synthetically produced) can still cause problems so I'd like to try and find the safe ones. Stuff like lycopene (tomatoes) has no recorded safety issues and surely you can buy this as a dye rather than him having tomato flavoured icing.

I've googled but found nothing.

Otherwise he'll have a white and brown car cake...

You can make orange food colouring with carrots by grating them into a very little hot milk, letting them steep for a while, then squeezing the juice out by pouring the whole lot into a cloth, rolling it up tightly and wringing it out. The carroty mess left is yummy. Trouble is, I don't think it's strong enough to dye sugar. My mum used to colour cream cheese this way. You can make quite a good pinky-purpley-red by grating beetroot, you don't need to steep it at all, but I don't remember whether or not the beetroot should be cooked first.

A lot of the paste dyes are safe, and because they're so intense in colour (unlike the liquid ones you get in the supermarket) you need to use very little. You could probably get a book on E-numbers at the library or helath-food shop to check the dyes before using them.

I have found 2 web sites that are quite good for colourings and cake decorations.

www.jane-asher.co.uk

and

www.purpleplanet.co.uk

the last one is the one Nigella Lawson uses for her baking supplies as well as the paste colours which you need a very little of and come in a huge range of colours I think both these sites offer organic/natural food colours and cake decorations.

Cochineal is a natural red colouring.

It's E120 BTW

What about asking at your local health food shop? Would they have any ideas?