Insects or E Numbers?

My granddaughter desperately wanted to make pink, as in 'VERY PINK' cakes today.   We made some last weekend but they were not quite pink enough.    I tried really hard to get some food colouring which is stable in baking but does not contain any of the dreaded 'E' numbers.    I would have settled for good old fashioned cochineal,  but I couldn't find any.

Which is a shame because I just happen to have stumbled across a recipe for home-made food colouring based upon

those little cochineal beetles.

To make Colouring
One ounce of cochineal, boil it in half a pint of water, five or ten minutes the add half an ounce of Cream of Tartar and half an ounce of Alum* add two ounces of loaf sugar, give it a boil, let it settle then pour it off and bottle it for use.

*Alum is also used in Baking Powder, so I suppose we have all ingested it at some point and it is considered to be safe.

Cochineal is a scarlet dye made from the crushed dried bodies of a female scale insect.   Sounds yummy, but on balance I think I'd rather use cochineal than some of the awful artificial colourants and E numbers which are put into modern food dyes, but that is my personal preference.

We made pink cakes, following a handwritten recipe in another one of my old books.

Rose Almond Cakes

4oz butter
4oz sugar
4oz flour
4oz ground almonds
2 eggs
Cochineal
Essence of Almonds

No method or baking instructions were given.  I simply followed the usual method of creaming the butter and sugar, gradually beating in the eggs, then add the flour, almonds, 'cochineal' and Almond Essence.

We baked them in a mix of cupcake wrappers and silicone heart-shaped moulds, at about 160 degrees.   However,  you know your own oven.

She was very happy with the results, the cakes are definitely pink on the inside.   The big heart-shaped ones are for daddy and Grandpa, of course.