Paint coloured with carrots

Following on from yesterdays crayon and red rice eating I thought I'd play it safe and use some safe to eat paint.  I wanted to use orange paint so I thought I would dye it using carrots.  I did end up with some juice to dye the cornflour paint with but I need to work on my extraction technique. I probably should have checked for some ideas on extracting dye from vegetables before I started. I have now found this on fruit and vegetable based paints.  Bookmarked I had information on egg dyeing which would also be useful,  from Clean on natural egg dyes  linked to this tutorial (for pre hard boiled eggs) at the Kitchen blog or here for fresh eggs  Kindling also had a post about natural dyes including a table for different colours.  She used some coriander leaves to make lovely patterns on the eggs.  (I have revisited extracting dye from carrot and butternut squash  here)

What I did was to cut a large carrot up small, should have grated them but was in a rush, microwaved them for 8 minutes, let them steep in some water for half a day (while we were out), then mashed and pressed them in a metal sieve over a bowl to collect the carrot juice.  I didn't end up with much juice.

I made paint by mixing cornflour with a little cold water to make a paste, then added boiling water to the consistency I wanted.  I then added the carrot juice.  It did turn a slight orange colour.  I added some tiny bits of carrots for fun.

I was going to give Luath white paper but since the paint wasn't as orange as I had hoped I give her orange paper.   Luath wasn't keen to put her hands in the paint (odd as she prefers to eat her porridge with her hands than a spoon) so I gave her a pastry brush.



And added a carrot.  She used the brush and the carrot for a while.  Then threw the carrot onto the floor, where the dog was only to happy to have it - another reason to go with edible paint!

Not once did Luath try to eat the paint or the carrot.  She must prefer crayons and dried rice!  The final masterpiece:



shared with Tuesday tots, see what else tots have been doing


(Luath is 15months)