How to Make Red Icing Without Red Food Coloring
If you want to learn how to make red icing without red food coloring, I have the solution! It’s non-toxic, delicious, natural, and beautiful!
If you are like me, you’re always looking for ways to cut back on the toxins, dyes, and otherwise harmful ingredients in your home. Food dyes are something that I’ve been concerned about for a long time, and it just makes sense to find alternative and healthy options when they are available.
With holidays like Valentine’s Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, birthdays, Christmas, and more, I wanted my family to have their cake and eat it, too…including the frosting! Let me show you how to make it.
Recipe for Red Icing
Not only is this red icing recipe delicious, but you can feel good about feeding it to your family. There are no weird chemicals or dyes. Just natural, organic food coloring!
Ingredients
Powdered Sugar – You will need some powdered sugar for this recipe. I like to use organic powdered sugar from Azure Standard because it doesn’t have that chalky after-taste, but use what you have.
Butter – Softened, unsalted butter will add some creaminess to the red frosting. This isn’t a buttercream frosting, but it still needs a bit of butter. Use the real stuff…no imitation butter here.
Milk – You will need a few tablespoons of whole milk to moisten the sugar and bring it all together. You can also use half and half or heavy cream for more decadence.
Vanilla Extract – Use good quality vanilla extract. Homemade extract is cheap to make and tastes better than what you can get from the store, but use what you have. I share how to make your own vanilla extract if you want to learn the method I most often use. I also share how to make an alcohol-free vanilla extract!
Beetroot Powder – And here’s the secret to turning the white icing into red icing…beetroot powder! Don’t worry, it won’t make your icing taste like beets. It will only give it the red color you’re looking for. Also, beet juice is not the same as beet powder. For intense color, stick with the beet powder. I buy organic beetroot powder from Azure Standard, but use what you have and can get easily.
Lemon Juice – This is optional, but can add a nice tanginess to your icing.
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Tools you may need
Electric mixer with a whisk attachment – You can also use a large bowl and whisk it yourself.
Fine mesh sieve for sifting the powdered sugar
Small bowl(s) – If you want to make different shades, you can put some of the basic white icing into separate smaller bowls and mix in different amounts of beetroot powder or other colored powders.
Small spoon(s) for mixing the beetroot powder into the small bowl(s).
How to Make Red Icing
Get out all your ingredients and your mixer. This recipe will give you a pleasant, somewhat muted red icing color. It is a true red color, though.
We will make enough icing for 12 cupcakes. I don’t like a lot of icing on casual cupcakes, but you can easily double this recipe to make more icing.
Put the fine mesh sieve over your mixing bowl and add one cup of powdered sugar. Use your whisk attachment to whirl the powdered sugar around and around until all the powdered sugar is sifted into your mixing bowl.
Next, add two tablespoons of softened, room temperature butter to your sifted sugar.
Turn your mixer on low and stir the sugar and butter together until it looks like coarse crumbles. As the butter gets incorporated into the sugar, you can increase the mixing speed without a huge puff of sugar making a mess on your counter.
Next, and with the mixer on the slowest speed, add tablespoons of warm or room temperature milk to the sugar mixture until it becomes a dry frosting. Then add two teaspoons of good vanilla extract and whisk it in well.
If you want to add a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice for more tanginess, add it here. I’m going to skip it this time because the flavor of these cupcakes and icing without the lemon juice is exactly what I am going for.
Keep adding tablespoons of milk one at a time until your frosting develops soft peaks.
Now, I like to separate this delicious, white icing into separate smaller bowls so that I can decorate cupcakes with different colors of icing. Either way, get the amount of white icing that you want to change into red icing.
Start with adding a quarter teaspoon of the beetroot powder to your white icing. Once you see the color, you can add more powder to darken it. It all depends on how much of the white icing you intend to turn red, and also the color that you’re going for.
Mix the beetroot powder into your bowl of white icing by giving it a good stir. It only takes a few seconds. You can taste the icing, but I promise it won’t taste anything like beets. You may see small flecks of red in your icing, and that’s normal.
Now you can put your delicious and healthy red icing on your cupcakes! For casual cupcakes, I like to put a dollop of icing onto the cupcake and spread it out with a butter knife. No need for perfection when the family scarfs them down as fast as they do. Plus, I like it when they look casual and simple.
Try adding different powders to achieve different colors. You can read more below this post!
Recipe Card for Red Icing
Simple and Delicious Red Icing Without Red Food Coloring
Equipment
- Electric mixer with whisk attachment (or large mixing bowl and whisk)
- fine mesh sieve
- measuring cups and spoons
Ingredients
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
- whole milk, warm or room temperature (You can also use heavy cream or half and half.)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- beetroot powder
Instructions
- Put the sieve over your mixing bowl and add one cup of powdered sugar. Use a whisk to whirl the powdered sugar around and around until all the powdered sugar is sifted into your mixing bowl.
- Next, add two tablespoons of softened, room temperature butter to your sifted sugar. Turn your mixer on low and stir the sugar and butter together until it looks like coarse crumbles.
- With the mixer on the slowest speed, add tablespoons of warm or room temperature milk to the sugar mixture until it becomes a dry frosting.
- Next, add two teaspoons of good vanilla extract and mix it in well.
- Add tablespoons of milk one at a time until your frosting develops soft peaks.
- To start with, add a quarter teaspoon of beetroot powder to your icing and mix it in well. You can add more to get your desired color. And that's it!
Most Important Tips
Use softened butter and warm to room temperature milk with this recipe so that you get smooth icing. You probably don’t want globs of hard butter in your icing, which is what you’d get by using cold butter or even softened butter mixed with cold milk.
Variations to the Recipe
Want something different than this delicious red frosting? You have options!
Royal Icing
If you want to make royal icing to pipe onto frosted cookies or for thinner and more intricate cake designs, just follow your royal icing recipe and add the beetroot powder at the end. I just use egg whites, powdered sugar, and enough whole milk so that the icing can be drizzled.
Blue Icing
Looking for how to make delicious blue icing without blue food dye? Add some blue butterfly pea flower powder! Pea flowers are edible and turn white frosting into delectable blue frosting.
Pink Icing
Use pink raspberry powder for a pretty pink icing color.
Lavender Icing
To make lavender icing, just mix together red icing and blue icing or a mixture of beetroot powder and a small amount of blue butterfly pea flower powder! I just mixed whatever remaining icing was in my red, white, and blue icing bowls to achieve a pretty lavender color.
But make sure to add just a bit of the blue icing at a time. It can overpower the whole thing if you’re not careful.
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