Tag Archives: food colouring

Nov8

Colouring Coconut

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Ingredients.

Ingredients.

Desiccated coconut can be used in many different cooking dishes, but lately we have been using it to decorate cakes. I once made a rabbit cake that I covered with plain white coconut for the rabbit’s fur, but sometimes I want to use coconut for something that isn’t white, so I have to colour it.

Coconut and food colouring in the bag.

Coconut and food colouring in the bag.

Post mixing.

Post mixing.

Colouring desiccated coconut is a very easy process and only takes a few minutes. I prefer to use a zip-lock sandwich bag to mix the coconut and the food colouring together. I add some coconut, just roughly how much I think I will need, and then the food colouring to the bag. I make sure that the bag is securely shut prior to shaking it up to move the colour around. Usually I worked the colour around the bag with my fingers to make sure all of the coconut is exposed to the food colouring.

Ready to decorate with.

Ready to decorate with.

Because I wanted to use the coconut for grass, I coloured it green. The kids also helped me colour some yellow to be used as sand. They like to shake the bags up and squeeze it all over to spread the colour.

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Jul3

Colour Mixing

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Food colouring.

Food colouring.

A and I got talking about colours today, and how some colours can be mixed with others to make new colours. We spoke about the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow. I asked A what she thought would happen if we mixed two of the primary colours together. She wasn’t sure, so we went out to the kitchen and did a little experiment.

We used food colouring in water. I filled three small cups with water, and then let A use some plastic pipettes to squeeze some food colouring into the water. She placed red food colouring into one cup, blue into one and yellow into one. She mixed the colour into the water with a spoon.

Adding blue to yellow to make green.

Adding blue to yellow to make green.

Then to the cup containing yellow water, she added some blue colouring. She mixed it up and was delighted to see that she had made green water.

Before squirting some yellow dye into the red cup, A accurately predicted that it would make orange. She was very pleased to see that it was indeed orange once she’d mixed it in.

Adding red food colouring to the blue water.

Adding red food colouring to the blue water.

Finally, to the blue cup A added some red food colouring. She had no idea what colour these two would produce, though she hazarded a guess of pink. As these colours are so dark, it was a little hard to see what had happened, until A lifted some of the water out of the cup with the spoon. She broke out with a huge grin when she saw the water had turned purple. It was very exciting for her.

This was a very quick and easy way of showing A how the primary colours mix to make the secondary colours. And it was fun 🙂

A's cups of purple, green and orange water.

A’s cups of purple, green and orange water.