A couple of decades ago (maybe longer!), I took a recipe-writing class from Nancy Baggett. Nancy is an accomplished teacher, recipe developer, and cookbook author who specializes in baking. She was calm and thorough, and I learned a lot from her.

We have stayed vaguely in touch over the years. I have read her articles, purchased a book or two, and written to her occasionally with questions about my own baking. I even purchased her diet book, which involves semi-fasting for two days a week and eating normally on the other five days.

One of Nancy’s unique skills is creating natural food colorings and dyes. She started this practice out of necessity. Her family has a lot of allergies. She wanted her grandchildren to experience all the joys of colorful cookies and cakes without worrying about the ingredients that lurked in their colors.

I don’t personally share Nancy’s allergies, but I must admit that I am often taken aback when I survey the ingredients in food coloring. I tend to use gel coloring rather than liquid because one needs less of it to achieve vibrant color.

Even that coloring, however, can have frightening ingredients. It may contain petroleum. It almost always contains chemicals, which help the color spread more evenly and last longer.

Nancy’s colors are made from natural ingredients and don’t tend to last forever. Not lasting forever is just fine with me. Baked goods are meant to be consumed fairly rapidly. I must admit, however, that I have yet to try executing her colors.

She started by mixing thawed juice concentrates with confectioner’s sugar and corn syrup. Lately, she has tended to use freeze-dried fruits, which she carefully pulverizes.

Both methods sound like a fair amount of work to me. I am encouraged, however, that some companies now sell non-chemical food coloring. Chefmaster makes a natural line of colors. And King Arthur Baking sells a natural food-color set I’m considering ordering. (If I do, I’ll let you know how well it works for me.)

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Meanwhile, at this time of year, I can prepare a natural food coloring recipe I first tried a few years back. It involves the fruit I can’t get enough of in late June: lush, juicy strawberries.

I got the idea of using them from King Arthur Baking. Its website featured a recipe several years ago that involved cutting up fresh strawberries and adding them to a basic butter frosting, along with some meringue powder to keep everything stable.

I stabilized my strawberry icing in a different way. I pulverized my berries in the blender, after which I cooked them into a puree to lessen their liquidity.

I let my puree come to room temperature while I baked my favorite yellow cupcakes. These cupcakes are a version of the classic 1-2-3-4 cake. Those numbers stand for 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour, and 4 eggs.

I didn’t want more cupcakes than my guests could handle, and the strawberry icing doesn’t last forever so we had to eat the cupcakes fairly quickly. (Poor us!)

I used half of that formula. The name 1-2-3-4 thus represents proportions here, not actual amounts.

Once the cupcakes cooled, I mixed some of my puree with butter and confectioner’s sugar. The icing had a gorgeous pink tint. And it tasted like the epitome of summer.

Ingredients:

for the cupcakes:

1/2 cup butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 cups flour

2/3 cup milk

for the icing:

1 cup cut strawberries

1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter at room temperature

confectioner’s sugar to taste (probably about 2 cups)

Instructions:

First make the cupcakes. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 18 cupcake/muffin pans with liners.

In a large bowl, cream the butter until it is light and fluffy. Beat in the sugar and then the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each egg. Beat in the vanilla, the baking powder, and the salt. Stir in the flour and the milk, alternating between the two and beginning and ending with the flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared cupcake pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean, about 25 to 35 minutes.

Cool the cupcake pans over racks for 10 minutes; then remove the cupcakes (with their liners!) from the pans. Cool.

You may start to prepare the icing while the cupcakes are baking. Place the strawberries in a blender and pulse until they liquify. (You may also put them in a 2-cup measuring cup and use an immersion blender.)

Pour the strawberry liquid into a saucepan, and cook it over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the liquid reduces into a thicker puree (about 10 minutes on my stove). Remove the puree from the heat, and allow it to cool.

When you are ready to ice your cupcakes, in the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar. Add 1 tablespoon of strawberry puree and mix thoroughly.

Add more puree and more sugar until your icing reaches the color and consistency that please you. (You may have leftover puree. Serve it on ice cream.)

Ice the cupcakes. Try to eat them as quickly as possible (this won’t be hard!) as the strawberry icing is perishable. Makes about 18 cupcakes.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.