Natural Easter Egg Dying

Looking for some fun Easter egg dying inspiration?  Have your kids check out one my girls’ favorite shows, “Creative Galaxy” on Amazon.  We watched “Arty’s Eggsellent Adventure”  (season 201, episode #11) this morning and then ran straight to the kitchen full of excitement to experiment with dying our Easter eggs using food.  We used what we could find in the fridge that had bright pigments.  We decided to try a combination of yellow onion peels and turmeric, beets and red onion peels, blue potatoes and frozen blueberries, and kale, broccoli and collards.  All the foods worked surprising well except for the greens which hardly changed the water color at all.  Purple cabbage would have worked great too, I imagine.  

Ingredients:

Experiment with different foods keeping in mind the ratio below.  We created 4 different colors using the above combinations of fruits and veggies.

2 cups of water

1 cup of food

2 tablespoons white vinegar (to help hold the pigment to the shell)

Instructions:

1.     Hard boil eggs.  White recommended for best color.

2.     Decorate the eggs using crayons, stickers, and elastic bands.

3.     Cut up or peal whatever fruits and veggies you decide on.

4.     Place each combination of food and 2 cups of water into a pot. 

5.     Boil and then reduce to simmer with a lid for 30 to 45 minutes.  The longer you simmer the deep the color.

6.     Pour each pot of water through a strainer into separate bowls.  One for each color.

7.     Add 2 tablespoons of vinegar to each bowl.

8.     Let cool to room temperature.

9.     Gently place your eggs into the different color bowls.

10.  Let sit for an hour minimum.  The longer you leave the egg in the brighter the color. 

Have fun getting creative and experimenting in the kitchen!