Easter Eggs

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. Hi!

It's just about Easter, and this year, we decided to try to dye eggs using natural dyes!

Eggs dyed without pellets!

I had tried this many years ago with little luck, but this time, I had the internet! So, to add to the collected knowledge, I am sharing what I did.

Blue Eggs

Hard boil eggs first and set aside
Chop up one head of red cabbage, place in a pot, and cover with 2 quarts of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 40 minutes. Strain into a bowl and keep the cabbage for eating (I just added salt & pepper and it was tasty). Add 2T vinegar and 2T salt to the mix and stir.

Add eggs carefully to the bowl and allow to sit overnight. They come out this gorgeous cobolt color. You can take them out sooner and be a lighter shade of blue. Note that the color does scratch so be careful! You can see some places where I scratched mine as I took them out of the dye bath.


Red Eggs

Hard boil eggs first and set aside.
Chop up three large beets or equivalent (peel them first so they will be tasty for eating). Place in a big pot and add 1.5 quarts of water, a big splash of vinegar, and a couple tablespoons of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour. Remove Beets. (They will now be partially pickled and you can just add more seasoning to them for a tasty side dish.)

Add a splash more vinegar to the beet water, and add eggs to the water. In about an hour you'll have light pink eggs, and after 5 hours you'll have dark pink eggs like in the picture. Remove carefully. They don't scratch as badly as the blue but they are prone to fingerprints.

Yellow Eggs.

Hard boil eggs first and set aside

OK, so I tried to do this with collard greens and it was a disaster. Don't do that. Instead, boil water and add 2T vinegar, 2T salt, and about 1/4 cup of turmeric. Stir well and cool a bit, then add eggs. In 2 hours they will be a fairly bright yellow.



Orange Eggs

DO NOT BOIL EGGS FIRST!

You will need the papery part of onion skins. I used yellow onions for this. You should probably use muslin or cheese cloth too, but I used viva paper towels. No kidding. But they were perforated and 2 of them broke. So don't do that. Use muslin or cheese cloth.

Lay out a piece of muslin or cheese cloth. Take your raw egg and rub it down with vinegar (thanks for the tip, Martha Stuart!)  Lay out a big piece of onion skin and place the egg on top. cover the rest of the egg with onion skin. Too much is OK. Too little is not so OK. Pull up all of the sides of the cloth and tie with a piece of string. place in water in a pan for boiling. When they are all done, start the water and allow to cook for about 20-25 minutes. Remove, cut strings, pull out eggs from the oniony mess. I hope that I get the chance in the future to do these right. Even with doing them wrong, they still came out a lovely shade of orange!

If you do any of these please let me know how they come out!