Pink icing that doesn't send children crazy???

[fondant4000]

Just wondered how I can make different coloured icing without using a colouring with the 'bad' e numbers in it.

I know some of the natural 'e' numbers are OK, so what can I use (and what is really bad) to make pink/red icing?

hmm, blended strawberries?

Blended strawberries would work. A tiny bit of beetroot juice would work too. Or cranberry juice?

what's in cochineal? I've got some in the cupboard, back in a rolymo.

oooh no very nasty E122 same as the red colouring. I'd try beetroot, it's very intense - from a a vacuum pack?

Sainsbury's do all natural food colours, including red.

that's useful info sorrell, i feel the need to replace all mine now i've read the labels.

Mum used to make us red cream cheese using beetroot juice. It doesn't go fire-engine red, more a sort of purpley pink.

Add cherry juice to the icing sugar instead of or as well as water.

Easy way to get beetroot juice - grate beetroot, and then squeeze it out in a cheesecloth. You get pure juice from that, which will have a rich colour, and not that much flavour to it. (You can use a juicer, too, obviously, if you have one.)

Wow! - fantastic.

Have generally avoided colourings, but made pink icing the other day and noticed that dd behaved particularly badly

Ok Mners - any other colour suggestions? How about green, yellow - and I'd be dead impressed if you've managed blue.....

Green -- creme de methe? Lots of happy kids... Blue curacao? (ditto). More seriously, if you roam the fruit juice aisles you should be able to find most colour variations. Those tins of Sirop you get in French supermarkets are good too, for paler colours.

Grate carrots on finest grater setting and squeeze through a muslin to get orange. But you have to use an old-fashioned manual grater - for some reason a food-processor grates 'dry' and you don't get the juice in the same way.

To get green you can use spinach. Just steam ever so lightly and squeeze. Unfortunately the juice ages yellowy-brown, and neither mum nor I can remember what she used to keep it green! Possibly fresh lemon juice?

Blue is unfortunately impossible using only natural colours. Well, that's not quite true - you could use woad or indigo, which are the two sources of natural blue colour, but they pong unbearably, and have to rot disgustingly to extract the colour. Probably also poisonous!

In Tesco they do Supercook Natural red food colouring - can't remember what it's made of but it hasn't got any E numbers on the ingredients list. Makes nice pink icing.

Cochineal is extracted from cochineal insects!

My mum made a thomas tank cake and all the kids were doing blue poos the next day!

blue poos!