Color fundamentals

Color made easy:

Solve your challenges with intensity, solubility, heat, light stability, and migration

Color intensity and solubility

Color intensity

A common myth about natural colors is that they lack vibrancy and variety. However, advancements in raw materials and formulation technology now allow natural colors to match artificial ones in shade and intensity.

Choosing the right color for each bakery application is key—for example, a heat-stable red for cookies or a high-pigment blue for intense frosting.

Base color impacts the final appearance, as well as fat content, protein level or incorporated air.

In aerated products like meringues and frosting, colors appear more pastel, so concentrated formulations enhance vibrancy.

Intense colors of cake-premixes, custard powders, instant jelly, sugar decoration, frostings, fat-based filings & coating can be achieved with I-Colors®.

Introducing I-Colors® Bold

Gallery guide

Heat stability

A lot of sweet bakery products are exposed to high temperatures which require heat-stable colors to ensure vibrant, long-lasting hues.

The final color intensity depends on baking temperature, cake size, and baking time. Smaller cakes retain color better due to shorter baking and less heat exposure. A red beet color, which is heat sensitive, may hold in a mini muffin (10 min bake) but fade in a pound cake (45 min bake).

Natural color stability:

Good heat stability: Turmeric, Carmine, Caramel, Vegetable carbon and carotenoids like annatto and beta-carotene.
Sensitive to heat: Red beet and Spirulina are prone to fading or dulling.
Color shifts: Anthocyanins such as black carrot, red radish and sweet potato do not fade but may shift from reddish-pink to purple due to the neutral pH in cakes.

Color intensity and stability depends on baking time and temperature

Choosing the right color will have a positive visual impact on the final product quality.

Gallery guide

Light stability and migration

Light stability is crucial for maintaining color vibrancy in bakery products, especially shelf-stable, packaged goods and exposed decorations such as frosting, sprinkles and icing.

While many natural colors have good light stability, some, such as red beet and turmeric, may fade without non-transparent packaging.

Encapsulation technology of the color pigments enhances light stability and prevents color migration, making it useful for layered cakes and pies where fruit filling color can bleed into other layers; or in cookies with bi-layered filling.

Fruit preparation with
carmine in a layered dessert.
Encapsulation prevents
migration of carmine.

A. B.

A. Colored using CapColors®
B. Colored using standard carmine

CapColors® encapsulation: 
Color particles surrounded by a layer of molecules of polysaccharide, protein or starch.

Gallery guide