Butterfly Pea Flower Icing!

I've made holiday art cookies for a couple years now but was always mildly disturbed by the sheer amount of gel dye that I had to add in order to achieve vibrant or dark colors in my icing.

This year I wanted to try a more natural approach so I colored my Winter Solstice cookies with butterfly pea flower powder! I'm super happy with the results (of the colors- icing consistency could still be improved)

The blue colors are just from mixing the flower powder straight into the royal icing. The purples were achieved by adding lemon juice, as the flower pigment is a pH indicator! This is especially exciting for me because I've always had a hard time achieving nice purples from conventional dye.

I'm excited to experiment with more colors, but thought I'd share my success with anyone else here that is looking for more natural ways to get deep blues and purples. Happy Solstice!