The Mermaid Toast phenomenon started on Instagram and has become an ongoing trend. No wonder, because it not only tastes delicious, but also looks beautiful.
However, many recipes I’ve seen tend to be toast for special occasions and, accordingly, aren’t particularly healthy. Therefore, I tested a few healthy variants that you can eat every day and present them to you now.
Making Mermaid Toasts is very easy. You only need a few ingredients and you can create beautiful toasts. In the following I will show you how to do it.
Mermaid toast recipe
Ingredients
- Whole grain toast
- Plantbased cream cheese / curd (almond based)
- Plant powder (e.g. blue spirulina powder) or juice
- Optional: berries, nuts or spices as decoration
Instruction
- Toast bread
- Mix cream cheese with desired plant powder
- Spread the cream cheese on the toast in a wave pattern
- Decorate with berries
In the following I will go into more detail about the individual steps and show you a few pictures of how it can look. Have fun with the imitation!
Why a healthy Mermaid Toast?
Many recipes that you can find on the Internet use food coloring. I myself had tried this once, as you can see in the following picture.
The colors were really intense and it looked nice, however, the taste did not really appeal to me. It just tastes a bit artificial. And every day I would also not be so happy to smear food coloring on my toast.
Food coloring is made from various substances. Some are animal, some are artificial and some are vegetable. I’ll take the food coloring I bought at the supermarket as an example:
Red: true carmine (E 120)
Blue: Brilliant blue (FCF E 133)
Yellow: lutein (E 161b) and curcumin (E 100)
The lice extract and the synthetic blue are also approved and not harmful to health in small amounts, but I still wouldn’t call them outstandingly healthy. The lutein and curcumin, on the other hand, sound better.
Both lutein and curcumin are said to have health effects, but it is not entirely clear to what extent they can be well absorbed by the body when extracted.
That’s why people are often advised to consume these healthy phytochemicals by eating whole fruits and vegetables.
So food coloring isn’t as unhealthy as you might think? Well… if it weren’t for the other ingredients in the color paste. In the first and third place you find sugar. Of course, that goes even better:D
If you want to enjoy Mermaid Toasts more often, food coloring is not necessarily the best option. But there is a healthier alternative: coloring with plant powders!
Below I explain which powders you can use, for example, and how you can easily do this yourself at home.
Which plant powder for the Mermaid Toast?
Without added sugar etc. you can prepare your Mermaid Toast with the help of plant powders. I have used here nettle-, turmeric- and spirulina powder, because I just had them at home.
By the way, the nettle also contains lutein and the turmeric powder contains curcumin. The powder was produced in each case from the whole stinging nettle and the whole turmeric root and thus these secondary plant substances are better usable for the body, as in the food colors.
Especially the nettle powder also contains high amounts of calcium, magnesium and potassium and can therefore also contribute to the daily coverage of the nutrient needs. The nettle is not considered a real superfood for nothing!
Unfortunately, it does not taste so good to mix nettle powder, for example, in drinks, because it does not dissolve. In cream cheese, however, it tastes great. Mermaid Toasts are therefore the perfect way to incorporate healthy plant substances into everyday life.
Of course, with plant powders you can make it even more colorful! Have you heard of the following plant powders?
- blue: butterfly pea flowers
- pink: dragon fruit powder
- red: beet powder
- many more
For a pink hue, by the way, you can also simply mix some berry juice from thawed raspberries or beet juice into the spread.
By the way, the inventor of the Mermaid Toast also used spirulina powder. Namely, green and blue. Also, what goes better with Mermaid Toast than seaweed powder?! Here you can see her original ocean wave style creation:
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Mixing the plant powder with the cream cheese
To make the toast, you must first mix the vegetable powder with the cream cheese. Depending on how well the respective powder mixes with the fish cheese, you need a little more or less of it to achieve an intense color.
For example, I only needed small amounts of the spirulina and turmeric powders because the color spread very well in the cream cheese. From the nettle powder I needed a little more, because the powder was a little coarser and could not be mixed quite so easily. But this also worked out without problems in the end.
Give the Mermaid Toast the underwater look
Once you’ve finished mixing your colors, it’s time to smear the toast. If you like, you can use the knife to create a wavy pattern.
The last step is the decoration. This is of course optional, but very fun! I think yes the blueberries can be well transformed into corals or bubbles. However, you can get further inspiration for a Mermaid Toast Topping on the internet and especially on Instagram.
One topping that you see a lot online, and that the inventor also used, is gold leaf. But it doesn’t have to be gold. You can also find great toppings at the supermarket.
For example, berries like raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, fruits like kiwi and banana, nuts, and cocoa pieces. Of course, you can also just get out a few spices and give the toast a special touch.
Conclusion about the healthy Mermaid Toast
Personally, I like the healthy Mermaid Toast much better than the version with food coloring.
If you want to prepare a one-time surprise toast, e.g. for a child’s birthday party, or if you fancy a particularly gaudy and photogenic breakfast, Mermaid Toast with food coloring might be just the thing.
If you can’t get enough of Mermaid Toasts and want to eat them every day (like maybe some little mermaids), I would rather advise you to reach for vegetable powders for coloring, as they not only look beautiful, but also contain many healthy plant substances. So two birds with one stone.
