The question of colour

There have been a couple of occassions now where we have made colourful cupcakes for kids functions and found that parents just won't let their kids eat our product!

The first time was at a Baby Bazaar back in 2008. We were invited to set up a stall amongst mothers who were selling buckets loads of clothes and toys their kids had grown out of. The idea was to promote our product in the hope of landing private orders. We made brightly coloured cupcakes to attrack the kids, but when it came time to purchase, the parents inevitably chose plain vanilla.

It happened again a couple of weeks back when we made cupcakes to donate to our son's daycare fundraiser. The cupcakes pictured looked like a technicolour dream next to most other things on the table. But again, the parents were avoiding them in favour of the plain brown offerings.

I have to admit, when I give my son a cupcake I pick the icing off and just let him have the cake. But this isn't because of the colour - it's more to do with the sugar and the fact that we haven't let him have a whole load of it to date. I think parents are naturally concerned about the use of colour in foods, yet the only one that should be of real concern is red. It's been known to send kids off their tree. Just ask any school teacher! I never recommend red velvet cake for anyone who will serve it to kids - it needs so much red food colouring to get that intense red colour.

What I can say is, having recently made that glorious Colour Cake, the effect of having those colours reflecting on us for five hours was positive. If anything, I think colour cheers people. I'm not going to hold back on colour - I think I shall use it even more!

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