Natural colours for bakery items can help products stand out on the supermarket shelf, show off their flavours, and create memorable and fun experiences – whether you’re working on a bake-at-home application to pastry case displays, it’s important to get the right colour with the right stability. Factors such as pH, baking time, leavening methods, and target flavours can all affect the selection of natural colours for bakery items. For cakes, colours with excellent heat stability should be used to sustain extended bake times. These can include Naturbrown® apple, class I caramels, turmeric, emSeal® beta-carotene, annatto, and carmine for a range of browns, reds, oranges, and yellows – the most common colours for baked goods.
Cookies and wafers have shorter baking times, opening the door to additional colours including pink and red from beet. Since baked goods are typically neutral in pH, care should be taken when using anthocyanin colours that will shift hue depending on the pH, appearing more purple instead of the pink to red seen in more acidic applications like confections. Purple sweet potato and Amaize® have proven successful in baked applications.
For buttercreams, inclusions, and fondants, oil technology colours can provide a range of yellows and oranges, as well as typically hard-to-obtain blues, greens, pinks, and purples. At a low dose, they’ll provide pastel shades or they can be added at a high dosage rate to hard fat for vibrant colours without increased viscosity.
Finally, cream fillings and custards are vital to a host of baked sweets. Due to the mild processing, there are many natural colours for bakery items like this: class I caramels for salted caramel, beet for strawberry, and turmeric for lemon.
Looking for more information? Check out our article on the Top 5 Considerations for Coloring Bakery Applications, or contact us to get started on your bakery project.
