The Best Natural Food Dyes & Sprinkles

When you are using organic and natural ingredients in baking, it can be challenging to decorate like everyone else! Choosing your health over an incredibly colorful cake is a really easy choice to make, yet sometimes you just want to be able to make a pink cake!

I am here to tell you that you can definitely decorate just like the pros even while using organic and natural food dyes and sprinkles! I'm sharing my top picks for the best natural food dyes and sprinkles for all your baking needs! For some naturally colorful desserts, check out some of my favorite recipes like Eggless Sprinkle Cookies, Mixed Berry Hand Pies with Glaze, or Soft Sugar Cookies with Pink Frosting.

The Best Natural Food Dyes

Organic Fruit & Veggie Powders

You can use organic fruit and vegetable freeze dried powders to color frosting, cakes, and more. If you want truly organic food dyes, this is the best way to go. Depending on what you're making you can use these in many baked goods because these are all powders. So, they can easily mix into frosting, cake batters, or cookie dough with compromising texture, such as a vegetable juice would do. 

You just need to be careful as you can get the flavor of some of these freeze dried powders if you use too much trying to get a darker shade. So, lighter shade are often best when using fruit and veggie powders. And, the good thing about fruit and veggie powders is they are single ingredient natural dyes, so they are naturally vegan and gluten-free.

• Beet Powder: Best for a rich darker pink color. Flavorless, so you can use as much as you need without altering the flavor of your desserts. Check out what this looks like in my Sourdough Red Velvet Cookies Without Food Coloring.
• Strawberry Powder: Great for pastel pink frosting. If you use too much, it will taste like strawberries. I use this in my Strawberry Vanilla Layer Cake and Strawberry Buttercream with Fresh or Freeze Dried Strawberries as I want strawberry flavor here, so using this powder is so convenient!
• Raspberry Powder: Great for a hot pink. If you use too much, you'll get raspberry flavor. Check out what this looks like in my Sourdough Red Velvet Cookies Without Food Coloring.
• Carrot Powder: For orange you can use organic carrot powder.
• Turmeric: This gives you the most yellow color, but it will definitely taste like turmeric if you use a lot. So be careful when using spices like this.
• Matcha: This is great for grassy green. This does have caffeine though, so need to be careful if you're not used to that or if you're baking for kids. I use this for leaves in my tutorial, How to Make a Flower Cake With Buttercream.
• Kale Powder: You can use organic kale powder for a richer green, and this is caffeine free.
• Blue Spirulina: This is my top choice for bright blue like water. This is also flavorless, so you can use as much as you need. Check out this blue for flowers in How to Make a Flower Cake With Buttercream.
• Blueberry Powder: Perfect for a blue/purple color. Check out what it looks like in Vegan Blueberry Bars With Frosting as I use this in the frosting!
• Dutch Cocoa Powder: Use organic Dutch cocoa powder for tan, light brown, or brown. This will taste like chocolate though!
• Activated Charcoal: Perfect for grey and black. You can use as much as you want as it has no flavor. Check it out in my Spooky Rose Cake for Halloween, which is a great Halloween recipe.

Find all the links to these dyes in my Amazon Shop page for natural decorating.

Suncore Foods

Suncore Foods are my absolute top pick for natural food coloring. They make organic and natural versions of every single color. They come in a powder form in a resealable bag, which makes it easy to store and use anytime. You can use these dyes for frostings, cakes, French macarons, milkshakes, and more! You can easily find all of them in my Amazon Shop page where I share all my natural food coloring picks. They make both organic and natural options, so you can choose what's best for you.

ColorKitchen Foods

ColorKitchen natural colors are my top choice for coloring frostings, cookies, french macarons and cakes if you need bright colors. They are not organic, but they derive the dyes from veggies like beets, turmeric, and spirulina. And they also work incredibly well in baked goods, especially if you need bright blue, hot pink, or more concentrated colors. The only thing you have to do is make sure the powder dissolves in whatever you put it in to show the color. They make pink, blue, yellow, and green and from there you can make orange and purple too. You can make everything from perfect pastel colors to bright bold colors! These work great for dying Easter eggs where you want bright colors!

Watkins

Watkins also makes natural food dyes that are a liquid, more similar to traditional food coloring. They have red, yellow, blue and green in their four pack. And, the dyes are made with spirulina, turmeric, and vegetable juice. So, if you are looking for something more similar to traditional dyes, these will make you feel more comfortable.

India Tree

India Tree also makes natural food dyes derived from plants. Theirs are a liquid dropper, more similar to traditional food dyes. They do work quite well and they have my top pick for the color orange, as this is incredibly difficult to get with just carrot powder or the Suncore Foods options. You can see their orange work so well in my Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake. They make a 3 pack of the primary colors and you can buy specialty colors (like orange) separately. Find everything in my Amazon Shop.

The Best Natural Sprinkles & Sugars

India Tree

I love India Tree for their sprinkles and sugars. The adorable pastel rainbow sprinkles you see me use in a lot of my bakes – those come from India Tree, the Carnival Mix. They recently just released a new rainbow sprinkle mix that is bright too, those are the Fiesta Sprinkles. They also make party mix sprinkles too!

They also make solid colored sprinkles in white, purple, green, pink, yellow, blue, orange and so much more. These sprinkles are amazing on shortbread cookies, on top of cupcakes, cakes and of course on your ice cream.

India Tree also has colored sugars in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink and white! These sugars are perfect on top of frosting or glaze. I've tried putting them on top of cookies before baking, and they don't do so well. I'd stick to these when topping frosted sugar cookies or brownies. Use these as a finishing sugar.

Just be careful when you're shopping India Tree, they also make sprinkles and sugars with actual artificial colors in them. So, make sure you're purchasing from their Nature's Colors line only, those are all colored naturally with vegetables. And, India Tree recently came out with naturally colored nonpareils which I'm obsessed with!

Try my Sourdough Strawberry Pop Tarts where I use India Tree Nature's Colors Decorating Sugars for that signature crunch.

Supernatural Sprinkles

This is a new brand I recently discovered. They make a lot of different kinds of sprinkles. But, the the ones I'm most excited about are their nonpareils as they are the only ones that are free of seed oils! It is incredibly difficult to find sprinkles free of artificial colors and seed oils, and these guys did it. Some of their other sprinkles do have seed oils though, so be careful if you are avoiding those.

Watkins

Watkins also makes naturally colored rainbow sprinkles and nonpareils. Their nonpareils are also free of seed oils, but the rainbow sprinkles are not.

ColorKitchen Foods

ColorKitchen has also started making sprinkles! They have rainbow sprinkles and nonpareils. Both sprinkles are free of artificial dyes and made with plant based ingredients. Their traditional rainbow sprinkles are a bit darker than India Tree Nature's Colors Carnival Mix, so it's just personal preference which color palette you like best.

*You can find all the sprinkles I listed (and even more) in my Amazon Shop page that's dedicated to natural decorating!

Try These Naturally Colorful Desserts

Eggless Sprinkle Cookies

Strawberry Snack Cake

How to Make a Flower Cake With Buttercream

Strawberry Almond Cake