Joyeux Mardi Gras! If you're like us and you've been celebrating all week, you're either marching your way down Bourbon Street for the big parade, or your having your own festivities at home. If you're looking to add some finishing touches to your Mardi Gras celebrations and libations for today, we have the perfect desert topper for you that no Mardi Gras is complete without: beignets!
Of course, beignets are a New Orleans staple, and obviously, we couldn’t just do a basic powdered sugar beignet. We spiced it up a little bit with purple, gold, and green colored sugar to make the beignets extra special. To save us time, we bought beignets from our local Cajun cuisine restaurant that has the best beignets in town and told them to hold the powdered sugar. For this recipe, we’re focusing on how to make colored powdered sugar to decorate the beignets to make it even easier for you. Here’s how we did it:
Step 1: Start off with three separate cups of powdered sugar, with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar in each. Start off with the first color we’ll be making: green. Place one of the cups of powdered sugar in the food processor and start it up.
Step 2: As the food processor is running, grab your green food coloring. Start off with adding 5 green drops, and continue adding based on how pigmented you want your powdered sugar to look. Let the food processor run for a bit, stop it and mix the food coloring that might have splattered on the processor and didn’t catch on to the sugar. Run the food processor again until the food coloring has mixed in completely with the powdered sugar and there are no lumps.
Step 3: Remove the powdered sugar from the food processor, and make sure to wash and clean the food processor in between colors that you’ll be mixing. You don’t want any colors to mix, and also make sure to dry the food processor completely if not, your next batch of powdered sugar will clump together.
Step 4: Moving on to yellow! Pro tip: for yellow, you won’t have to add too much food coloring to the powdered sugar, perhaps only 2-3 drops, but add based on how pigmented you want your powdered sugar to look. Remember to mix with a rubber spatula to get in all the corners to make sure to powdered sugar doesn’t get mixed with the food coloring. Continue running the food processor until the powdered sugar is completely mixed with the food coloring. Move the powdered sugar to your prep dish, and clean the food processor for the next color.
Step 5: It’s time for purple! Grab your red and blue food coloring to repeat step 2. To make purple, you’ll want to add 3 drops of red and one drop of blue and continue adding more according to the ratio based on how dark you want your purple to be. Continue running the food processor until the powdered sugar is completely mixed with the food coloring, and move the powdered sugar to your prep dish.
Step 6: Now that you have all your colors, begin powdering your fresh beignets! We had three separate plates to separate the three colors. To add more decor to the beignets, we added edible glitter and sprinkles (gold, green, and purple) to match all of the colors of the powdered sugar. You are now ready to serve!
We had a blast making these beignets! With our Mardi Gras Pineapple Daiquiris, our custom mask straws, and our tulle masquerade masks, we’re ready to party today like there’s no tomorrow!
If you were inspired to celebrate Mardi Gras this year with some of our ideas, show us how you celebrated using #BeMakeful on Instagram!
Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Priscilla Castro
As a creative, you can often hear Priscilla say "I can make that!" This Los Angeles native has let her creative guide wear many hats in her career, as a writer, strategist, photographer, and DIYer, especially when it comes to fun projects for her mini-schnazuer Ellie and her room. When she's not creating, you can find her at a local show or taking a weekend roadtrip away from the city.
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