One thing that natural food colors have—that commercial colors don’t—is taste. Because the color comes from real food ingredients, a small amount of flavor will remain in the final icing. The more color you add to the frosting, the more it’s going to taste like that ingredient. This may not matter much for ingredients like fruit, matcha, coffee, or cocoa, which are commonly used in baking, but it makes things tricky for ingredients like squid ink and spinach.

One thing that natural food colors have—that commercial colors don’t—is taste. Because the color comes from real food ingredients, a small amount of flavor will remain in the final icing. The more color you add to the frosting, the more it’s going to taste like that ingredient. This may not matter much for ingredients like fruit, matcha, coffee, or cocoa, which are commonly used in baking, but it makes things tricky for ingredients like squid ink and spinach.

One thing that natural food colors have—that commercial colors don’t—is taste. Because the color comes from real food ingredients, a small amount of flavor will remain in the final icing. The more color you add to the frosting, the more it’s going to taste like that ingredient. This may not matter much for ingredients like fruit, matcha, coffee, or cocoa, which are commonly used in baking, but it makes things tricky for ingredients like squid ink and spinach.