Naughty Nana has been promoted to Supernana not bad for a week's work! This evening she put the kids to bed solo while I did a few extra hours at the office. I came home to sleeping babies, a tidy house and dinner on the table. She did look a little traumatised by the experience and I don't have the heart to tell her she's got a Cheerio stuck to her top, but she still gets ten out of ten. She's now on the sofa with a glass of wine, watching ‘American Idol'. Perhaps I should replace the glass with a bottle and a straw?To understand exactly how impressive this solo-grandparenting is, you need to appreciate that we are still riding the wave of the birthday cupcakes. Chloe turned three last week and we have a few more birthday treats to get through. This means that dinner is followed by a mini sugar-rush that coincides spectacularly badly with bedtime. Still Supernana seems to have survived “just one more story, pleeeeeaasse, just ONE MORE, PLEEEEAASE” unscathed. If only it was summer and Chloe could do laps of the garden before bed.Nevertheless, although I was instructed to let our not-so-little one have fun on her birthday and enjoy her cake in all its sugar madness, I did manage to sneak in some habitual damage limitation. Although I like to pretend I'm Martha Stewart, I am a big fan of cake mixes especially when you can get such a great organic one here. The Dr Oetker Organics Vanilla cake mix is fantastic (Lindo's, Devonshire). And although it's still high in sugar remember “organic” doesn't automatically mean “healthy” it's better than the more mainstream options. I have always been a fan of organic grain choices, simply because the enormous surface area of grain allows for so much chemical contamination.The D. Oetker cake mix can be used to make cakes, cupcakes or mini cupcakes. Mini cupcakes are fantastic because the portion size is so small. However, as Chloe has been to enough birthday parties to know better, I went with the regular-sized option. I also dyed them purple. Why not? Hmmm.Unfortunately purple is Chloe's favourite colour. For weeks she had been requesting purple cupcakes and for weeks I had been trying to think of a way out. I don't mind the occasional sugar-rush, but I am loathe to give my toddler artificial colourings. I guess it‘s because they seem so blatantly fake and chemical, that I simply can't tolerate it.Artificial colourings (usually listed as E numbers) are traditionally used to replace natural colour lost in food processing or storage and sometimes, to ensure that colour is consistent. However E numbers are also used to list some of the natural colourings (such as E100, a yellow colour taken from turmeric root) so I can't make it really easy and just tell you to avoid all E numbers.The real concern lies with some of the biggest offenders: sunset yellow (E110), quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122), allura red (E129), tartrazine (E102) and ponceau 4R (E124) as according to the Food Standards Agency in the UK, certain combinations of these have been linked to hyperactivity and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Certainly, in my experience so far, children with behavioural problems (and/or headaches too) often improve drastically when artificial colourings are removed from their diets.So what did I do? Whilst International Imports stock an impressive array of naturally coloured decorations (India Tree do a naturally coloured as well as artificially coloured line) they didn't have a liquid I could use to turn the cake mix purple. In the end, after trying hard to Buy Bermuda, I went online and ordered the India Tree natural primary colours set. This had mixed results. After messing about with the blue and red, the bright purple cupcakes I put in the oven came out green. (Note to God or whoever is out there: this is not a fair thing to do to a mummy the night before a 10am birthday party.) However the icing (Dr Oetker's organic icing mix) went purple and stayed purple. A brilliant, bright, amazing purple. Phew.So in the end, my lovely girl got her purple cupcakes. I'm pretty sure the fact that they were coloured with red cabbage extract, means that she also got a serving of veggies too. As a mummy, I would never try and persuade you not to create the bright red fire engine or green dinosaur cake your child requests for their birthday, but as a nutritionist, I just wanted to let you know it's possible to colour it naturally.The advice given in this article is not intended to replace medical advice, but to complement it. Always consult your GP if you have any health concerns. Catherine Burns BA Hons, Dip ION is a fully qualified nutritional therapist trained by the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in the U.K. Please note that she is not a registered dietitian. She can be contacted at nourishbda[AT]gmail.com