Hi folks, I'm a new user here, but I've used CakeCentral as a great resource in helping my wife start her cakeball business. I couldn't find any previous posts that addressed our specific question about transference of food dyes while dipping.

My wife has a small cakeball business she operated as a cottage business for three years in our home. Last spring she decided to make it an official business, complete with commercial kitchen, liability insurance, etc.

She makes several flavors of cakeballs that she dips in white almond bark chocolate. Recently she has become paranoid that dipping different flavors in the same batch of melted chocolate could result in a transference of food dyes and possibly lead to an allergic reaction. Folks with a red dye allergy know to avoid red velvet, but she's worried that someone could have a reaction from eating a lemon flavor dipped in the same melting chocolate.

In response, she now melts separate batches of chocolate for each flavor. She does all of her dipping, forming, etc. by hand which makes this a very time consuming process.

In four years, no one has ever approached her that they had an allergic reaction. I can't find any research that indicates any significant volume of dye can be transferred through the chocolate, but she says she won't be satisfied until I can prove it CAN'T be transferred in significant enough volume to trigger a reaction.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thank you so much for your time,

Adam C

don't suggest your cakes are dye free 

my son was actually sensitive to red dye among other things -- he's 35 now but I would never have purchased anything for him that might have contained red dye, at the time it was chocolate cake mix, barbeque chips etc -- so just say that your stuff is not dye free to blanket the whole thing like other suppliers do -- i'm sure you've seen the disclaimers where they say "made in a facility that uses nuts, eggs" etc --

and in my business, I left a wide swath between my products and people with allergies -- I did not cater to them --

sweet of you to check for her -- best to you all

Yes I agree with K8