I'd tried using muddled raspberries and pomegranate juice and it barely gave the cake any colour, if any at all. After reading about beets being used in the batter, I was still skeptical since every picture I saw of the end result was more of a reddish-brown than a nice, bright red. Plus the colour in beets can easily be altered with any pH change in the batter, so that too made me a little leary.
There were dozens of different methods for using beets; grate them and mix them in, use beet juice, boil the beets and use the water...but I wasn't happy with the results of any of them. Finally I tried boiling about 4 medium sized beets for almost an hour. After that I reduced the water until there was approximately 4oz left; what was left over was a concentrated natural dye that was as dark, if not darker, than any red food colouring I've ever seen. After letting it cool, I mixed it into the batter and success! I was left with the gorgeous red colour I had been after.
The only thing I was surprised at was after baking, the inside of the cupcakes reverted back to the light brown colour of the batter before I added the colouring. The outside, however, stayed that nice red. I still have a little tweaking to do, but overall I'm very pleased with how they turned out!
