Food coloring is banned in my house. Or rather, it isn’t… We do have food coloring in out house, its just used to print things in our printer. No, seriously. (See here how we fill our ink cartridges with food coloring.)
Whether or not the FDA approves of food coloring’s safety makes no difference to me- I don’t trust that its fully safe and that there will be no harmful side effects from ingesting food coloring, even if only rarely, so I will never put food coloring into our food.

But what do you do then if you actually want to make your food prettier, like if you want to make colored frosting? Well, I don’t have the solution to all the possible colors you might want, but here’s how you can take advantage of nature’s food and make your own magenta food coloring out of beets.

Homemade Beet Food Coloring

1. Take a whole, raw beet, chop off both ends, and peel it.

2. Chop the beet into smallish pieces, then stick it in the food processor until you get it as small as you can.

Yes, I know, it looks like a crime scene. Lol.

5. Here’s the juice you get left with. The flash made the color a little wonky- it was somewhat purplish pinkish red, like a really deep magenta. This is your food coloring. The more you use, the more purplish/magenta’ish your end product will be. If you use just a little, then your food will be more pink looking. (Actually it was more of a cross between pink and lavender, but either way a pretty color.)

Want to see the beet food coloring in action?

The frosting here was colored with beet food coloring. Isn’t it a pretty color?