Yes, You Can Make Your Own Sprinkles

The answer to both is an emphatic yes.

By DIY-ing it, the power is all in your hands: You can make sprinkles of any color or flavor that you choose. Plus, you’ll impress at your next party when you set down your beautiful platter of be-sprinkled baked goods and say, “I made it all from scratch. Yes, the sprinkles too.”

It takes only a few ingredients to make sprinkles: confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, salt, milk, and food coloring. Mix all that together to make an icing, then pipe it into long lines on parchment paper. Let the icing dry out overnight, then gently roll up the parchment paper to break the piped lines into lots of little sprinkles. 

That’s all it takes—you don’t even need to turn on the oven, light the stove, or break out the knives. It’s a great project for kids, too, which is why it landed a spot in The Complete DIY Cookbook for Young Chefs.

There are a few keys to success. Make sure to use gel food coloring; water-based food coloring will dilute the icing too much and your sprinkles won’t hold their shape. You’ll separate the icing into different bowls before adding the food coloring, but since you’ll be using the same piping bag for all the colors, it’s best to stick with all warm colors or all cool colors. Mixing warm and cool colors will get you brown, and who wants brown sprinkles? 

Unless they’re chocolate, of course.

Speaking of flavor—our recipe uses vanilla extract, but you can swap that out for any flavored extract you like. Peppermint, lemon, coconut, root beer . . . get creative with it!

Finally, we used the Wilton No. 3 Round Decorating Tip for the piping bag in order to get sprinkles of the perfect size. If you don’t use that exact tip, you’ll want one of a similar size that is used for fine detailing.

So yes, you can make sprinkles, and yes, you should make sprinkles, so the only question that remains is: What kind of sprinkles will you make?