Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Natural Easter Egg Dyes
I’ve been dying to try this and loved it! I prepared 4 dyes at night, and tried it out with the kids the next day. I’m surprised that I was able to stand the smell of boiled beets, cabbage, and spinach with my super smell-power! But it really was a fun experiment. I was so curious if the dyes would actually work. It boggles my mind that eggs turn blue from sitting in red cabbage juice! So cool.
The results were awesome! I would definitely do this again.
left to right: beets (pink), turmeric (yellow) onion skins (orange) and red cabbage (blue)
One source said you could use spinach for a green dye. I was a bit skeptical since spinach seems so mellow compared to beets and cabbage. Yup. Try a nasty, barely-yellow color! We won’t be making that mistake twice.
It was really simple: 1 quart (4c) water, 2 Tbsp vinegar, and 2 c vegetables (or 3T turmeric). Boil for 20-30 minutes, strain, then cool. Some instructions said that you can boil the eggs with the veggies, but I was nervous the eggs would crack boiling for that long.
The kids were SO EXCITED about this! They didn’t even have a problem with the patience factor: letting eggs soak overnight. They couldn’t wait to check them the next day and would decide which to take out and which to leave in longer. It was cute.
The longer they soak, the deeper the color, so if you want pastels, they can soak for just a few hours. I wanted deep, dark colors, so we let several soak overnight and some for 2 days!
These 4 are my faves: blue and orange being my top picks.
