OK, this may be kinda weird to you, but I've been avoiding food colorings lately, so today when Malachi got out his Kwanza book and wanted to make the cookies in it, I decided to try and color the icing with natural food colors. I know that doesn't make the sugar-laden icing healthy, but I know that food colorings have been linked to making kids with attention problems struggle more, and we all know that one of my kids is always off in his own universe, so I figure it's worth avoiding but not prohibiting. Make sense? No? Oh, well. Anyway, here is what I did:
I cut a small beet in half and added about 1/4c of water and then I nuked it for 2 minutes in the microwave. I added a small amount of the liquid, about 1/2 tsp, to some icing (about a tablespoon). It made a lovely baby pink color. It actually doesn't show up as pink in the picture as it really is:
For the yellow, I added just a pinch of turmeric to some icing. I wondered if the taste would be off, but there's just so much sugar involved that you really don't taste the turmeric at all. For the brown, I added a bit of cocoa. Later on, we mixed the pink with some yellow for a nice light orange, but I don't have a picture of that one.
Malachi and Lydia really had fun decorating the cookies using the icing and toothpicks. (Note: toothpicks take a long time, so it was good for stretching the activity!)
I also made rolls today, and so I let each of the kids have some dough to shape however they wanted. That was a hit; even Elijah joined in.
Malachi made angry birds, Elijah made R2D2, and Lydia made a pancake.
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