Dye from orange vegetables revisited

I had a trial a few weeks ago at extracting dye from carrots to use to colour paint..  I hadn’t given the process much thought but I did manage to turn some paint slightly orange.  After reading a few different articles and having a think I tried a different method.

Method
First peel, top and tail and chop the carrots into smallish pieces. 
Use a mini blender/chopper to grin the pieces up small.

Spoon the vegetable pieces into the centre of some muslin.  Wrap the top of the muslin, sort of into a cone shape.

Then twist, squeeze, squash the bag over a dish, to extract the juice.  I made some playdough and added the carrot juice as it was heating.  It was only a tablespoon into a 1/2 cup of flour mixture.  It did turn slightly orange

The next day I was cutting up butternut squash to make a curry and decided to do the same process with the bottom of the squash.  The butternut squash yielded juice easier and much more compared to the carrots.   I just added the juice directly to the playdough I had made already, along with some more flour to even out the wet/dry balance.  It was a much better colour.

I would suggest using the squash, it is much easier to extract the juice and you get more.  Squash is more expensive to buy, but I used the top half for a curry and the bottom part to make the dye so it was quite economical.

I gave Luath the playdough as I finished off preparing the curry.  She played with it for a short time then threw it on the floor.  Oh well, at least the dough keeps in an airtight container for another day.
shared with Tuesday tots see what else tots have been doing


(Luath is 15months)