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how do you decorate a birthday cake without artifical dyes?


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I am going to start being very careful about the kinds of foods we eat and try to rid our diets of all food coloring and preservatives and other stuff we can't pronounce. But my one son is having a birthday in 2 weeks....how do I decorate a boy's cake without breaking our diet???

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Small plastic toys/figurines

 

Dye-free candy from health food store

 

Raisins, currants, or cut-up fruit leather

 

White icing (or tinted with spinach juice, turmeric, or other natural dyes)

 

ETA: Fresh berries, cut-up melon, etc.

Edited by Eleanor
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Chocolate frosting is tasty!

 

We decorated several cakes with toys or non-edible decorations. One of dd's favorite cakes had Ponyville figurines on top. We washed them off and they became play things. One year, dd wrote her name with mini chocolate chips.

 

Can you choose some type of action figure your ds likes, and put them on the cake?

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Is there anything particular that you *want* to do? Is there a theme or something?

 

For instance, you could just do chocolate and vanilla icing for contrasting colors and decorate that way. I'll put up the photo of a cake I made last week that I thought was fun to look at, but doesn't require any artificial colors. You just make a batch of very dark homemade chocolate icing and a batch of vanilla butter icing and then mix the two at different proportions to make progressively lighter shades. Decorate the bottom of the cake with the darkest icing, then move to the lighter shades as you move upwards. (The cake itself is basically the same -- a batch of dark chocolate and a batch of white chocolate cake, then mixed at different ratios before baking.)

 

I know people who've used beet juice and turmeric, etc, to color icing -- but it matters what you have in mind. They do also impart a flavor (even the marketed "natural" colors have a bit of a taste to them), so I tend to prefer to skip the coloring all together unless there's a very particular look you're hoping to achieve.

 

395526_10150516075455878_688000877_9080939_1491979748_n.jpg

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One of dd's favorite cakes had Ponyville figurines on top. We washed them off and they became play things.

Just wanted to add that in case anyone is thinking of doing this for a girl, you can use grape juice to make lovely fruity-tasting pinkish/lavender frosting for the ponies to play on. :)

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Lovely cake, Abbey!

 

We have found beet juice to work well for frosting, but I figured your ds wouldn't want pink! Raspberries make purple. The natural food dyes do impart a strong flavor if you try for a dark color. The naturally colored sugar sprinkles taste fine, but are expensive. I think chocolate is the way to go! :thumbup:

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I have always used berries to decorate our cakes. I make my own frosting and put strawberries or blueberries or raspberries on the top as decoration. It looks quite lovely. Sometimes I add a sprinkle of clear decorating sugar to the fruit. It adds a nice sparkle.

 

I have also used edible flowers. My grocery store sells small packages of edible flowers in with the herbs.

 

I have made chocolate leaves (paint melted chocolate onto lemon leaves, chill, then peel off) chocolate curls or shavings. Chocolate chips look fun as well.

 

I am good with a decorating bag and have done things like swoops and swirls of frosting.

 

And, there is always the fallback: a nice dusting of powdered sugar just before serving.

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Just wanted to add that in case anyone is thinking of doing this for a girl, you can use grape juice to make lovely fruity-tasting pinkish/lavender frosting for the ponies to play on. :)

 

We used blended raspberries, which left polka dots (seeds). :lol: Dd was happy, but I bet grape juice would have been prettier.

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canadian smarties (like M and M's) are artifical flavour-free and dye-free. made by nestle. they are available on amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Nestle-Smarties-5-Pack-100g/dp/B004VD37QQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328502579&sr=8-1

 

you could make a sheet cake, cut out the number of his age, ice it with chocolate icing and cover the top of it with smarties. :001_smile::001_smile:

 

ann

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I have been experimenting with different foods to try to color our sugary treats, but not always getting the exact color. Some colors are really hard! I found these natural food dyes at the Natural Candy Store:

 

http://www.naturalcandystore.com/category/natural-baking-decorations

 

They are a little pale/light in color. Mixing them doesn't really give the results I'm used to with the food dyes from the grocery store. I haven't been able to make the colors very vibrant or bright, but they have come in handy this past Christmas and my kids enjoyed having colored frosting to decorate with.

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I'm attaching a pic of the cake I made my daughter. If you left off the "grass" and the candy corn construction cones it would be dye free. Well...I used yellow frosting to write 2nd B-Day, but you could use plain white. I dug out part of the cake and put in some cookie crumbs, used pretzels for logs, and real truck toys. (target).

post-17065-13535086229221_thumb.jpg

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