Many pastry chefs want to turn an ordinary, albeit delicious, cake into a work of art. Assistance in this is provided by a variety of food colors that can be used to color decor details, cream and cakes.
All food colors are divided into natural and synthetic. The latter are divided into liquid, dry and gel. The overwhelming majority of commercially available dyes are synthetic.
Synthetic dyes
Liquid dyes are great for coloring creams and protein-based drawing materials for decoration. They can be added to the sugar paste instead of regular water. These dyes are often used in their pure form in airbrushes for painting cakes.
Dry dyes are powdery. They are ideal for coloring small parts or adding additional color to dough and decor. Such dyes are diluted in vodka, alcohol or boiled water. For a tablespoon of liquid, you need to take paint on the tip of a knife. In some cases, these colors can be applied dry to baked goods.
Gel dyes resemble liquid dyes, but have a thicker consistency and concentration, which makes them versatile and very economical. With their help, you can color sugar mastic, glazes, creams (all except protein) and dough. They allow you to obtain rich and vibrant colors and a wide range of shades.
In the coloring of one confection, several types of dyes can be used to obtain a specific color.
Natural dyes
Natural food colors are easiest to make yourself from brightly colored vegetables. Beetroot or black currant juice, coffee, orange peel, saffron, turmeric, spinach juice - all this allows you to give baked goods the desired color without artificial preservatives. However, natural dyes are not as bright as synthetic ones, and it is rather difficult to achieve the desired color by mixing them. In addition, in some cases, you have to take into account their taste, so as not to spoil the taste of the finished baked goods.
To get a new hue from existing dyes, try mixing them. Use clean dishes for this. If you need large quantities of a new shade dye, remember which colors you are mixing and in what proportions.
Keep in mind that in a fat cream, almost any dye acquires a rich color; in a protein cream, to obtain the same bright shade, you have to add much more dye. By the way, you cannot use dyes based on alcohol and fat to color the protein cream, since the cream settles from such a neighborhood.
If the easter egg dyeing formulations indicate that they are edible, they can also be used for dyeing baked goods.
