Naturally-Colored Buttercream Frosting Recipe

THE FARMHOUSE

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Valentines Day is upon us! And my goodness I’ve come to enjoy this holiday so much! You too? Garrett and I never really celebrated but the kids like to do crafts and bake cookies and bake more cookies, and I’m all in!

I’m quite certain that frosting sugar cookies is the perfect Valentines Day activity, no matter who you are. So today I’m sharing our favorite buttercream frosting recipe that makes use of natural food coloring (because nature makes the best colors!). The secret to this delicious frosting is the freeze-dried fruit you add to color the buttercream. When spread on a heart-shaped sugar cookie, this frosting is fruity and beautiful and perfect for your valentine, galentine, kiddo, or just your lovely self.

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Farmhouse kitchen, sources here

I really don’t like the taste of traditional food coloring. Have you ever noticed it? I think it’s kind of chemically and distracting. So I searched for a natural alternative last year and stumbled onto Freeze dried fruit. To use it as a colorant, you blend it into a powder in a food processor or blender. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find freeze-dried anything at our small-town grocery store, but sure enough they had a few different fruit flavors in the health food aisle.

The freeze-dried fruit makes the most beautiful, made-in-nature color. But what I didn’t expect was how delicious the fruit would make the frosting! Holy moly. It’s SO good. I could eat this frosting by the spoonful…and you better believe the kids did! ;)

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This buttercream frosting recipe has evolved over the past few years. It started as my mother-in-law’s classic ‘creamy vanilla frosting’ recipe and then slowly shifted towards a more traditional buttercream recipe. After experimenting with freeze-dried fruit, it really has become a recipe all its own. I hope you love it, too.

Sugar cookies

We use this recipe from the New York Times and swapped half of the vanilla for almond extract (I swear almond extract is the key to good sugar cookies!). One batch yielded sixteen 3” hearts.

Naturally-colored, fruity buttercream frosting

Ingredients

1 cup butter, room temperature

3 cups powder sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp almond extract

freeze dried fruit, ground into a powder (we used 2 oz of strawberries, see note)*

whole milk, as needed

*note: depending on the color you want to achieve and the fruit you’re using, you may want to add more or less than 2oz of freeze dried fruit powder. To achieve the lightest pink, we used about 1 tbsp of fruit powder (less than 0.5 oz) and then added from there for each darker color. For the darkest pink, we used both bags of freeze-dried fruit powder (2oz in total).

Instructions

one // Blend the freeze-dried fruit into a powder using a blender or food processor. The powder is really fine so you’ll want to make sure that the top of the blender/processor is completely closed during this step. Here’s a screenshot from my phone of what the powder looks like:

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two // Cream butter in a mixer until smooth. Add powder sugar, one cup at a time and mix until smooth. You’ll probably need to scrape down the bowl during this step. Add in extracts and mix until combined. Frosting should be fluffy and smooth.

three // If you want to do multiple colors, separate frosting into small bowls. Alternatively, to achieve an ombre look, leave all of the frosting in the mixing bowl and pull out frosting as you darken the color.

four // Now it’s time to add color. Start with a small amount of the freeze-dried fruit powder (maybe 1 tbsp) and mix until combined. Scrape down the bowl and get the color completely mixed in. If you want the frosting darker, add more freeze-dried powder (remember you can always add more but you can’t take it away). As you add more powder to the frosting, it will get thicker so you’ll need to add a bit of milk back in. Key word here, a bit! Start small with the milk, maybe 1/2 tsp - again, you can always add more, but you can’t take it out. The frosting should be creamy, fluffy, and easy to work with.

five // Frost those cookies. This is the fun part! I use an offset spatula (the smallest from this set) and give the kids butter knives for this task. Personally I think buttercream is best when left thick and spread imperfectly with a knife, so don’t be shy.