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 Organic Lofthouse Cookies.

The Best Natural Food Dyes

Organic Fruit & Veggie Powders

You can use organic fruit and vegetable 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 batter, or cookie batter. You just need to be careful as you can get the flavor of some of these powders if you use too much.

• 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. Buy here.
• Strawberry Powder: Great for pastel pink frosting. If you use too much, it will taste like strawberries. Buy here.
• Raspberry Powder: Great for a hot pink. If you use too much, you'll get raspberry flavor. Buy here.
• Carrot Powder: For orange you can use organic carrot powder. Buy here.
• Turmeric: This gives you the most yellow color, but it will definitely taste like turmeric if you use a lot so be careful! Buy here.
• 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. Buy here.
• Kale Powder: You can use organic kale powder for a richer green, and this is caffeine free. Buy here.
• 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. Buy here.
• Blueberry Powder: Perfect for a blue/purple color. Check out what it looks like in my Vegan Blueberry Blondies as I use this in the frosting! Buy here.
• 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 Haunted Garden Cake, which is a great Halloween recipe. Buy here.

Suncore Foods

Suncore Foods are my absolute top pick for natural food dyes. 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 buy them on Amazon and here's links to all my faves. They make both organic and natural options, so you can choose what's best for you.

• Pink Food Dye
• Orange Food Dye
• Yellow Food Dye
• Green Food Dye
• Blue Food Dye
• Purple Food Dye
• Red Food Dye

ColorKitchen Foods

ColorKitchen Natural Food Dyes are my 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! Buy their 3 pack on Amazon here.

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. You can find them on Amazon, they make a 3 pack of the primary colors and you can buy specialty colors (like orange) separately

• 3 Pack Primary Colors
• Orange Dye

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, their Carnival Mix. They recently just released a new rainbow sprinkle mix that is bright too, those are the Fiesta Sprinkles.

• India Tree Nature's Colors Fiesta Sprinkles
• India Tree Nature's Colors Carnival Mix Sprinkles
• India Tree Nature's Colors My Party Sprinkles (round flat rainbow sprinkles!)

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

• Bright Red Sprinkles
• Orange Sprinkles
• Bright Orange Sprinkles
• Yellow Sprinkles
• Green Sprinkles
• Bright Blue Sprinkles
• Purple Sprinkles
• Pink Sprinkles
• White Sprinkles
• Chocolate Sprinkles
• String of Pearls (white round sprinkles)
• Nonpareils

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.

ColorKitchen Foods

ColorKitchen has also started making sprinkles! They have rainbow sprinkles and nonpareils. They are the only one on the market who makes natural colored nonpareils that I know of! I'm obsessed with these sprinkles! 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.

• ColorKithen Foods Rainbow Sprinkles
• ColorKitchen Foods Nonpareils

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