Pumpkin Sugar Cookies with Natural Food Dye!
These cookies were made using this recipe I found online, but with one important modification: natural food dye!
The brand I used was at my local grocery store (HEB) and it is called Adam's Extract, 4 Food Colors, Free from Artificial Dyes.
It cost $7.48 which was a little over twice the amount of regular artificial food dye, but it gave me peace of mind knowing that I'd be eating dyes made with food-based ingredients like vegetable juice, turmeric, spirulina, and vegetable glycerin.
Food dyes aren't the only kind of dyes I care about -- I also care about the types of candle dyes we use in our candles. Even though we're not eating our candle dyes, so they pose less of risk, it's still important that they are made responsibly with the health and safety of people, animals, and the planet top of mind.
That's why we use trusted CandleScience candle dyes that comply with the CandleScience CleanScents+® fragrance standards. Just like our fragrance oils, our candle dyes are free from organ toxins, acute toxins, CMRs (carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reproductive toxins), phthalates, parabens, and ingredients on the California Prop 65 list.
Now, back to the cookies -- for this recipe, I achieve the orange color of the pumpkins using half yellow dye and half red dye. For the green stem, I used the green color.
For both, I used a spoon and bowl to "hand mix" the dye with the dough. For the orange dough, once I added some drops of red and yellow and fully mixed them, I would look at the color and decide if I needed more red, more yellow, or both. To achieve the orange color, I ended up using 1/3 of the red bottle and 1/3 of the yellow bottle. To achieve the green color, I only needed 1/8 bottle since there was much less dough to work with for the green stem.
For the cook time, I recommend going a little under 10 minutes. For my cookies, I stopped at 9 minutes, for the perfect soft cookie texture.
Overall, the final cookie tastes almost like shortbread. It's not too sugary, very buttery, and a tiny bit crumbly. But it is delicious! I'm definitely going to be making some Irish Breakfast tea with it soon for an afternoon treat! And, of course, I'll be lighting up my Pumpkin Creme Brulee candle to add to the Autumn atmosphere.
Or better yet, I'll make a Pumpkin Spice Latte, and burn the Basic Witch candle (which also smells like Pumpkin Spice Latte!)
Cheers,
Ellen Knox
Moon Wax Candle Co.