‘Au Naturel’ Rainbow Frostings

The usual assortment of naturally colorful pure fruit-juice concentrates normally sold in supermarket freezer cases works well in this recipe. However, be sure to read labels, as some frozen juice products are tinted with the same commercial petrochemical food dyes you’re trying to avoid! I’ve found cranberry, orange, Concord grape, raspberry-white grape and cherry-grape all produce lovely, unique shades. Many more hues can be created by blending the shades together or adding a tiny amount of cocoa powder. I’ve provided a starter list of blends and the resulting colors they produce below, but, like an artist, you can mix and experiment to create many more custom hues.

The directions call for using the maximum amount of juice to produce the brightest colors, but if paler shades are preferred, simply substitute some water for part of the juice concentrate called for. In case you’re wondering, the juices do flavor as well as color these icings—most tasters find this actually enhances and adds dimension to the frostings. Note that bottled juice concentrates often stocked on shelves in health food stores are not a good choice. The au naturel color pigments tend to fade at room temperature, so the frozen concentrates are much better for decorating.

On the assumption that you’ll want to make several colors of icing at once, the basic recipe  yields enough to fully decorate around 12 to 15 cookies. I normally make up at least three or four colors to provide an appealing “rainbow” array for decorating a batch of sugar cookies. But feel free to double, triple or even quadruple the recipe to decorate an entire batch in a single color.

_{Recipe from Simply Sensational Cookies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by Nancy Baggett. Photography by Diane Cu and Todd Porter. Copyright 2012.}