Taste the Rainbow Pancakes With Homemade Food Colouring.

My daughters love to set me challenges and I love to make them happy, so they thought it would be "fun" for me to make rainbow pancakes using only fruits and veggies from the cupboards, which considering we don't have any of the typical food colouring ingredients, was the only way we would be able to get colour into the pancakes.

Not one to shy away from a challenge but also slightly worried, knowing that natural colourings don't always have the same vibrant outcome, I was ready to roll my sleeves up and get stuck in.

So let's get started.

Supplies

PANCAKE MIX:

240g all purpose flour (can substitute for a gluten free flour blend, just remember to add xanthan gum)
320ml milk (dairy free alternative works as well)
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs separated
100g sugar
1/4 tsp salt
50g butter (or margarine / dairy free alternative)

FOOD COLOURINGS:

Red - cooked, pureed beetroot
Orange - cooked, pureed carrot
Yellow - Turmeric 1/2 tsp in 1 tbsp of water
Green - Matcha powder: 1/2 tsp in 1 tbsp of water
Blue - 200g red cabbage cooked, strained + 50g sugar added then reduced. 1/4 tsp baking powder
Violet - 50g blueberries pureed

UTENSILS:

Bowls, lots and lots of bowls
Measuring spoons
Measuring cup
Knife
Peeler
Spatulas
Pancake pan
Blender
Stand alone mixer
Sieve
Saucepan

Step 1: Making the Food Colourings

Going through my kitchen cupboards I tried to find at least one of every colour of the rainbow, seemed totally logical reasoning but would it actually work? Let's see.

The idea behind each colour was to make sure there wasn't an excess of water, as once they are mixed into the pancake batter, they will already be less vibrant, so no need to dilute it any further.

TOP TIP: if you use too much water or feel that after blending any of the ingredients it's a little watery in texture, don't be afraid to gently reduce it in a saucepan. Just keep a keen eye on them so they don't burn.

RED: looking at a packet of beetroot and seeing it's red juices I thought perfect. I only used one small head of cooked beetroot, popped it in the blender and was surprised that it reminded me of tomato ketchup (perhaps that will be another recipe one day!)

ORANGE: I peeled one medium sized carrot, chopped it into small pieces, placed it in a saucepan and added just enough water to cover the carrot. Slowly cook until the carrots are soft and allow the water to evaporate. Blend the cooked carrots to a smooth puree.

YELLOW and GREEN: the easiest of the colours to create. Simply mix 1 teaspoon of turmeric and matcha powder (separately) in 1 tablespoon of water. You are looking for a thick paste texture.

BLUE: I know what you are thinking, red cabbage has a beautiful purple colour, but with a bit of magic, well chemistry really, it can be changed to a gorgeous blue colour.

Here's how:

Shred 200g of red cabbage, place in a saucepan and add just enough water to cover the cabbage. Allow to slowly cook. Strain the cabbage and put the juices back into the saucepan. Add 50g of sugar and reduce to a thick syrup.

I was surprised at how purple this turned out so I did keep half of the purple syrup to one side before carrying on with the rest, as a purple back-up colouring, if the blueberries failed.

With the other half of the purple syrup I added 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) and watched the magic happen.

Now it wasn't exactly the blue I was looking for, but my daughters fell in love and called it "mermaid blue".

PURPLE: I know what you are thinking, why didn't I use blueberries to make the blue colour? Good question. Well aside from their name and gorgeous blue hew to their skin, once pureed up, you have a lovely red wine colour.

INDIGO: you'll need to mix purple and blue in equal measures to make an indigo colour, or leave it out completely.

Now we need to make the pancake batter, which is perfect because it will allow all of the colours to fully cool down.

NOTE: I did puree up some cherries as I had them around, thinking they may be used as a colour phase, but in the end I didn't need them.

Step 2: Pancake Batter

I'm sure we've all made pancakes before so you'll know that it's a pretty straight forward recipe.

Normally I would add baking powder to my batter to create that light, fluffy texture, but with my chemistry hat on, I knew this would change the pH of the natural colours (like the baking soda did with the cabbage), so this is a slightly modified method of making a pancake batter:

Mix the dry ingredients together (flour, sugar and salt).
Whisk the egg yolks and milk together.
Make a well in the flour mix and add in the egg yolk and milk mixture. Very gently whisk so no lumps form. The key is to not over-mix at this point as you don't want your pancakes to end up rubbery in texture. If you are using gluten free flour, this won't be an issue.
Add in the melted butter.
Whisk on high the egg whites until they form a stiff peak.

Step 3: Time to Make a Rainbow

Now it's time to make a rainbow (I hope!)

I separated out the flour, egg yolk and milk batter into 8 bowls (I told you you'd need a LOT of bowls!) and into each one I added a good heaped tablespoon of each colouring.
For the indigo colour I added half a tablespoon of blue and half a tablespoon of purple.

You'll notice 8 colours, because I pureed up some cherries, thinking they might be needed, but in the end I didn't use them, but I still cooked them up anyway, so not to waste.

As you can see some colours were more vibrant than others (those in the pure powder form), but I could definitely see the makings of a rainbow and I knew they would change even more when cooked.

To each bowl, gently fold in the egg whites (about 2 heaped tablespoons per colour). This will give it that light and fluffy texture.

Step 4: Cook, Trim and Eat

Now it's time to cook the pancakes, yay!

I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to ladel out the batters (washing in between colours) and got 3 good sized pancakes out of each batch.

Since I added butter to the batter mix and I used a non stick pancake pan, I didn't need to add any extra butter or oil whilst cooking. I find by adding the butter to the batter, it avoids having a greasy or oily pancake, which quite frankly nobody enjoys.

Cook on a low to medium heat. Once you see bubbles forming and popping on the top surface of the pancake, it's time to flip them.

Once all cooled I took a cookie cutter and trimmed them all up and cut them in half to really see the rainbow effect. This it totally optional.

Step 5: Conclusions

My daughters were really impressed that I actually managed to make rainbow pancakes just using ingredients from our kitchen. Whilst they were completely mesmerised by the intense purple, followed by mermaid blue colour created by using red cabbage, I could see they were apprehensive about actually eating them (as was I).

Let's face it, the idea of creating rainbow pancakes using store cupboard ingredients sounds really cool, but you can't deny that each mix will potentially be a different flavour and texture.

I mean who wants to eat cabbage flavoured pancakes? Surprisingly the cabbage flavour was very, very subtle and could quite easily have been completely hidden if you added butter or syrup afterwards, with the same applying to any of the other pancakes.

Overall I would say this challenge was a success!

I would absolutely love to see if anyone else has a go and whether you try different ingredients to create the colours.