Artificial food dyes are something to be wary of and with holiday parties to attend and baked goods to be given, I thought I'd share my experience in making colored sugar.


Last week I attended a holiday treat swap and since I love to bake, I was all game! For the first time ever though, I aimed to make my own colored sugar with all natural ingredients. Armed with about three or four tablespoons of beet juice (leftover from a jar of beets) and about two cups of organic sugar, I went to work and was pleasantly surprised at the result: a lovely bubblegum pink sugar.


The process of creating pretty pink sugar was really easy. Seriously, incredibly, ridiculously easy! You can do it in three steps: pour sugar in bag, pour beet juice in bag (add until sugar reaches desired color), and squishy shake! (Squishy shake means kind of shake and squish it all together at the same time.) When you're done, you'll want to spread it out on a plate to let it dry overnight. If it gets hard and forms clumps, just put it back in the bag and lightly take a rolling pin to it.


SOOOoooooo...in the end, my sugar looked great! BUT... I couldn't get it to stick to my dough! Hah! Maybe it was too fine? Or maybe it just wasn't a bright enough color? I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I was running out of time so I forgot about the coconut and just coated the cookies with powdered sugar. I topped them with candy cane kisses and they turned out great.

Anyway, the recipe came from Hershey's and it's pretty easy. I am aware that there is red food coloring in the candy kisses, but they were candy cane... and they were really good. It's Christmas time. *Hangs head*