The moment one of my high school best friends, Tami, shook out her pony tail on the school bus and revealed silky, light blond hair with beautiful pastel pink steaks I knew that life was not fair. For as long as I could remember (in high school freshman time, that would be weeks) I had been spending every weekend adding every known chemical to my head to get a change. My mother, (being decidedly anti-dye) had said I could try anything except bleach (sneakiest mom move ever when your daughter has dark hair). I scrounged up the money to head to Georgetown to obtain a tub of manic panic, sure that I had finally out witted my hair’s pigmentation. It did nothing. It is very not punk to have to explain to people that if they look your head as a slight angle from a couple centimeters away they should definitely notice a twinge of purple. Take that, the man! Even sitting for hours coated in henna, which felt like slathering a swamp on my head, did nothing. Yet, Tami had simply set her pale hair in a cup of kool-aid and was blessed with the mane of a unicorn. I looked at a chunk of my splint ended, almost black hair and sighed. I could deal with the blonds have more fun trope, even the idea that gentlemen prefer blonds, but the fact that Tami could basically pour a packet of sugar on her head and come out with mermaid hair just was unbearable. I had never felt the universe more stacked against my hopes and dreams than in that moment.
So, I’m not a natural candidate to promote natural food dye. Load up on chemicals to do what you gotta do, is what I say, when it comes to adding color to your life! But, in the case of royal icing, every now and then it can be fun to go natural. And it will work for anyone!
Basically, with a head of red cabbage, some beets and a sprinkle of turmeric you can end up with a rainbow of chemical free colors.
Cut up your cabbage in large chunks and cover with water- let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
Roast your beets for about 45 minutes peeled, sliced and wrapped in aluminum foil at 425.
For every color except the yellow, make a normal royal frosting recipe, but cut the water down by half, since you will be adding liquid from the veggies- even the beets which you don’t add liquid to directly will release it and thin out your icing.
Separate your white royal icing into bowls, and add a teaspoon of the cabbage liquid for purple. To the remaining cabbage juice add in about a half teaspoon of baking soda, it should turn blue. Add about a teaspoon of that blue cabbage juice to make blue!
Add a 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric to the white to make yellow.
Yellow and blue icing can be mixed to make a natural green. Or you can use a 1/4 tsp matcha powder for a speckled green that is really pretty and tastes cool.
For pink- plop some of the beet chunks into a bowl of white frosting and swirl around, once you get the shade you want, remove the beet chunks.
The icings are fun for spring time! And extra cabbage juice can be used to dye eggs or in fun acid/ base indicator experiments!